Ending child slavery (2001)

From the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today’s world is fraught with deliberate distortions. This is why it is not unusual for NGOs, governments and the powers-that-be to, once in a while, pick on a banal issue and carefully weave a web of heart-breaking propaganda around it. This is done with the aim of covering up the reality and at the same time to arouse the fellow-feeling instincts of candid individuals to donate money. Last May the world was treated to such an episodic storm-in-a-teacup by an NGO-based in the Republic of Benin in West Africa.

This time around it was a big noise about an ageing ship which was not seaworthy carrying, according to the NGO, about 450 underage children to be sold into slavery in Gabon. These kids were allegedly bought in Togo and Benin. When about a week or two later the ship was tracked down, it was found out that there were actually about 40 youth in it. Only a few were underage, and many were accompanied by their relatives. I do not deny that human trafficking exists nor do I dispute the fact that the Benin slave ship incident was a case of child slavery. However, as will be explained presently there was gross exaggeration involved and, more importantly, virtually nothing was said about the nature, causes and remedies, to such a hideous phenomenon.

The nature of child slavery

Child slavery (and also adult slavery) is not a new phenomenon in the world (not only in Africa). The incidence of this cruel activity takes place in two main forms. In the first place there is the crude aspect of it where the child becomes the property of the rich owner. This is mostly found in Sudan, Mauritania and other North African countries. It is also practised in Ghana among the Ewe tribe (of former President Jerry Rawlings). It is called the “Trokosi”. However unlike the Trokosi system is based on culture and tradition, in North Africa mainly blacks are forcibly ceased and turned into slaves. The case of the victims of the Benin slave ship of those children who were being sent from Ghana to Gambia to work in the fishing industry (that controlled by some Ghanaian fishermen living in Gambia or even those children providing slave labour in cocoa or coffee plantations in West Africa are usually “sold” out by parents and relatives and mostly not for good. (See Daily Observer, Gambia, 10 May.)

The second, mild, type appears in the shape of such euphemistic terms as “maid”, “babysitter” etc. This category involves mostly females. These are children from impoverished homes who are supposedly employed by the more affluent families. But it is the conditions under which they work that betray the slavery relations – they find themselves in: they are mercilessly underpaid; they work throughout the day. Those who are made to sleep with the family they work for do not have “working hours”. As long as there is something to be done, they have to do no matter the time. But what is more pathetic is that they are often targets of sexual abuse either by the man or his sons. They are also subjected to verbal and physical assaults. This system is very widespread in the Senegambia region and among the Arabs.

In fact many of those making noises about child slavery keep maids. This abuse of children’s rights as regards their exploitation by the owners of wealth can also be seen in the so-called civilised world. Notice for instance the case of over half-a-million schoolchildren working illegally with many playing truant to do for just a pittance. (See “Voice from the back”, Socialist Standard, May.)

Why?

Many people may not be able to figure out how in this modern age people can indulge in slavery or, worse still, willingly offer their loved ones for sale. These people are so sympathetically touched that they cannot imagine the cause of such inhumanity. On the other hand those rabble-rousing on child slavery fail to highlight the causes, most of the time for obvious reasons.

But one thing very certain is that almost all those engaged in slavery (in all its forms) are Christians, muslims or believers for that matter. Under normal circumstances these slavers would not do any harm to fellow human beings especially innocent children. So if these people irreligiously defy the holy books and perpetrate such wickedness, then it is obviously for a reason more important than religion. And that is money, profit. The system in operation throughout the world today is based on money. Without money one cannot live. Consequently anything that one can do to have money is “normal”. Even religious leaders (Christian, Muslim, etc) will use every underhand tactic to extort money from their mostly impoverished followers, and without any pity; businessmen and women will tell every lie just to make profits, etc.

This world, as it is now, is controlled by those who own big money and the means of living. They use their wealth to form political parties which, when in power, rule on behalf of the owners. Since the rich make their money by exploiting the masses through their (the rich) control of the means of production and distribution of wealth, the ruling parties or governments act in the interest of the party owners. In the process, the masses are neglected since social wealth is appropriated by the few and rich party owners. Left with nothing to eat, a starving man or woman can easily (out of dire necessity) give out a child in exchange for food (reflected as money). This is what pertains not only in Africa but also in especially Asia and Latin America.

In the same vein, others knowing what such possibilities exist will take advantage of the situation and get involved as agents just to enhance their access to a continuous flow of money and thus food. Thus child slavery is real business (money – commodity – money) which is capitalism in practice.

In mid-May, in the wake of the Benin slave ship saga, government officials from Ghana and La Côte d’Ivoire flew to England to discuss the problems in the cocoa and coffee industries. The issue was apparently sparked off by the news of the Benin slave ship. The discussions highlighted among other things the fact that chocolate industries in Europe and America reaped all the profits whilst the poor cocoa farmers experienced lower and lower incomes. Such a phenomenon, they said, naturally leads to the search for cost-effective methods of production. This is a euphemism for the use of child slave labour in cocoa and coffee plantations. Thus the whole issue is making money, profit.

What is to be done?

In extolling their usefulness to society, NGOs and their ilk often claim that they sensitise the world community on problems or that they expose the problem to the whole world. This, to an extent may be true. But invariably it is done more to attract funds for their organisations than to seek solutions to the problems. A clear case of making money out of other’s misery. And that is exactly why most of the time they exaggerate or blow issues out of proportion.

However experience has proved that attempts to correct “injustice” in the world can never be attained by pursuing single-issue matters like talking to people about child slavery. Child slavery is only one of the symptoms of the disease confronting mankind. Call it the profit system or the rule of money or capitalism. Tackling child slavery is thus like trying to treat the symptom of a disease and leaving the disease intact. So the NGO and those agencies and governments who keep crying foul constitute in the main a dubious business entity. They solicit for funds from the two antagonistic sections of society: they are spawned by the rich to enhance exploitation by soothing the pains of the poor; and they also take from the poor (especially through contributions from taxes levied by states) to keep them (the poor) immersed in poverty.

In furtherance of such objectives governments, NGOs and other such groups facilitating exploitation of man by man, easily come up with farcical and indeed nonsensical solutions to such issues. Consider for example the suspension by a German football team of the owner of the Nigerian-registered vessel involved in the shipping of the child slaves from Benin to Gabon. The owner, a Nigerian professional footballer in Germany may rather use as a pretext his suspension or even total expulsion to get more deeply involved in child trafficking (if he personally did take part in the matter at all). Such solutions are hypocritical and complete non-starters.

Again, just around the time the Benin slave ship episode was unfolding, the BBC’s Focus On Africa programme carried a news item on a proposed trip to Sudan by the world-famous musician Michael Jackson to assess the issue of child slavery there. Paradoxically Jackson himself was alleged to have been accused before a law court of sexually abusing a little boy. The case was however settled out of court. Such is the double standards of this money-infested system that the rich who are seen to be solving problems are actually those causing them.

Child slavery like poverty, illiteracy, disease, war, hunger, corruption and all the misery afflicting the human race have one thing in common – they result from (the use of) money. Before I explain the relationship between these tribulations and money, one point will have to be noted. That is that a wrong notion is preached by the ideologues of the present system (who of course formulate and control public opinion) that human needs are unlimited whilst resources are limited. Therefore only those who have money can meet their needs. This kind of misinformation is wicked and malicious. On the contrary money is the root cause of all the woes we live with. A few examples will suffice here.

The most important human need is food. Available records indicate that world food production is far higher than the quantity required to go round all mankind. However because of money food is locked away in huge quantities just to make super profits in the form of money from those who have it. In fact sometimes they callously dump food into the sea or even refuse to cultivate arable land. This, just to maintain high prices.

Another problem facing mankind is sickness. The pharmaceutical industry is so advanced that enough drugs and medicines can be produced to prevent and cure most illnesses. Yet this will never be done and people will continue to die because they cannot afford medicines as these are manufactured and locked up in drug-stores reserved only for the few who can pay. The recent lawsuit brought by the South African government against some western pharmaceutical companies on the issue of HIV/AIDS medicines is a typical example of inhumanity of money. The owners of the companies may publicly declare that they help mankind, yet when it comes to their money and profit they refuse to allow cheap drugs to be produced for sick people who cannot afford the expensive ones they produce for the rich. One could go on and on.

Thus until the money factor is eliminated and in its place, a system based on free access is practised, child slavery; child soldiers, mass murders; war; want and deprivation, etc will continue to live with us.

The question now is: how can mankind attain this money-free society of free and equal access to goods and services? Part of the wealth bequeathed to us by those who preceded us in this world is written records of how society came about, underwent changes and how we can improve upon our life today. Marx, Engels, William Morris, etc are some of such thinkers. People who agree that there is something wrong with our society will have to acquaint themselves with the literature that these precursors have put down and lots more by others who think on the same lines. Once people understand these theories of change then they may want them implemented for the benefit of mankind and together we can make a change.

Suhuyini

Greasy Pole: Who Wants To Pick This Bone? (2012)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Grateful as we are to our guardians in Westminster who labour mightily to protect and nurture us we should not overlook that they also have human needs. Like a flexibly regulated system of claiming for incurred expenses. Like meeting the demands of flamboyant media producers to expose themselves to the nation’s reverential scrutiny. Like their need to relax the tensions of relentlessly legislating by giving way to laughter in the Chamber where their talents are displayed- laughter as a kind of therapy for them, side to side erupting in a booming, orgasmic release. Luckily there are in that august setting some who have a reputation for their skills in stimulating such pleasure. When any of these rise to their feet with the words “Thank you, Mister Speaker” they are not expressing gratitude for the opportunity to mouth yet another gabble of platitudes and evasions but are giving notice of the release to follow from their words. This is considered to be a useful, constructive way for Members of Parliament to spend their time.

Pleasing the Wife

The constituency of Wellingborough, Rushden and Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire is represented in the House of Commons by the Conservative Peter Bone, who can be relied on to entertain the Commons in the style to which they are accustomed by opening his contributions to their proceedings with mention of his wife: “This morning at the breakfast table Mrs. Bone was saying . . .” or perhaps “It would be a great help to my wife and the Bone household if . . .” Mysteriously, this reduces the MPs to frantic laughter, as Bone asks David Cameron to rule out any more contributions to a Eurozone bail-out or to agree that it is necessary to maintain the laws against blasphemy and blasphemous libel or to denounce gay marriage as “completely nuts” (a particular preoccupation of his; last month he strongly objected to Nick Clegg naming those with such views as “bigots”). Amid the hilarity David Cameron, perhaps wriggling on the hook in Prime Minister’s Questions, is able to get his share of laughter by a smoothly suggestive reply: “A very big part of my life is spent trying to give pleasure to Mrs. Bone” or “I wish my wife was easy to please as Mrs. Bone”.

From behind this screen of sickening drivel it may be difficult for Mrs. Bone to get herself noticed. She works as Mr. Bone’s Executive Secretary (at a top-end £40,000 a year) in which she rates herself “a one-woman focus group” who “listens to people on the ground” (which seems to include only those who agree with her). Mrs. Bone has political ambitions of her own, which were disappointed when her application to stand as the Conservative candidate for election as the local Police Commissioner was rejected on the emphatic terms that she “did not display a sufficiently developed understanding of what the job would entail and did not have a sufficiently clear vision of what she might do if elected” (requirements which might rule out her husband as well as a whole clutch of MPs). But the disappointed candidate was not put off; this, she sulked, was “bully-boy behaviour . . .  the party grandees wanted to get at Peter through me”. It might have been expected that the next step for her would be to resign from this collection of bullying exponents of the tactical underhand were it not that capitalist politics, with its competing ambitions and need to deny reality, does not operate with such consistent honesty.

Speeches

And “consistent” Is not a word to be readily associated with this pair of wedded Tories.  Peter Bone’s first experience of trying to be an MP was encouraging for him when, standing in Islwyn against the hapless Labour leader Neil Kinnock, he recorded the highest ever Tory vote there. However he did not come up to this promise in subsequent elections in Pudsey and Wellingborough because he lost to swings notably worse, for his party, than the national trend. In fact when, in 2005, he eventually won at Wellingborough it was by 687 votes – a swing of only 2.9 per cent when the national swing was 3.1 per cent. Perhaps there was a message in this about him personally and his voter- averse style (in 1995 the Daily Mirror condemned him as “the meanest boss in Britain” in response to him paying a 17 year-old trainee 87 pence an hour). In action in the Commons, he was rated as a prolific speaker but in case this gave the wrong impression he was one of three who, according to The Times, “boost their ratings on the internet by saying very little, very often” with an example of one contribution of only three short sentences which was about the postmaster of the tiny Northamptonshire civic parish of Little Irchester. He is on record as describing the NHS as something which “would not be out of place in Stalin’s Russia” and for opposing regulations designed to give equal rights in goods and services to gay people. He could not have been surprised when, earlier this year, Tory MPs ejected him from the Executive of their mouthpiece, the 1922 Committee.

Trafficking 

In February he opened a Commons debate on human trafficking – among the cruellest, most ruthless of crimes estimated to generate $82 billion a year, almost as much as arms dealing and drug smuggling. It is, in other words, typical of the capitalist system – savage and inhuman as it is driven by the all-dominant motive for profit and the abuse and waste of human life. It was inconsistent with this reality for Bone to offer the argument that an independent National Rapporteur – such as there is in Holland – would be more effective in keeping a check on the problem than the present slapdash system. Significantly he also supported his case on financial grounds: “ . . . it would do all the things we want at a fraction of the cost”. Peter Bone is one among many who claim an ability to manipulate a significant change in this horror. But in fact he is only likely to find a place in history as a feeble joker.

Ivan

People as Commodities (2019)

From the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

A slave is the property of another person, just like a book, a shirt or a car. A slave can be bought, sold, punished, mistreated, ordered around, with no power or means to object or resist. Slavery was a lengthy stage in human history, found in the Roman Empire among many other places, and, with the slave trade, played a significant part of the development of countries such as the UK and the USA. It still exists today, and one of its most prevalent forms is human trafficking, the trade in human beings, which brings in vast profits for some and is accompanied by unspeakable human misery.

Human trafficking ‘involves recruitment, harbouring or transporting people into a situation of exploitation through the use of violence, deception or coercion [where they are] forced to work against their will’ (antislavery.org). It applies to perhaps twenty million people, though statistics are unreliable given its secretive nature; in 2016, there were globally fifteen thousand prosecutions for trafficking, with 66,000 victims identified. It need not imply actual transporting of a person from one place to another, as people can be forced or duped into working without necessarily being moved around. The term ‘modern slavery’ is sometimes employed in a slightly different sense, without recruitment having to take place, as some people are actually born into slavery. But ‘slavery’ and ‘trafficking’ are frequently used interchangeably.

Often people are lured with promises of well-paid work in a comfortable situation with plenty of time off, only to find that they are effectively enslaved, living in dreadful conditions, forced to work long hours, with no pay and no holidays, given just enough food to maintain them; moreover, they have no dependants who need to be supported. Their passports will often be confiscated as a way of controlling them, and they may be threatened with violence or deportation if they complain too much. Women trafficked into sex slavery are a prominent example, with them having no say in how many men they have sex with. Other examples include domestic servitude and forced labour, including people having to work to pay off huge debts. Promises of a career in top-flight football are used to entice boys to travel to Europe. Even when released from slavery, the victims may be deported, or else left in limbo for months or years while police and government agencies decide what to do.

Some individual cases will put a human face on the statistics and general descriptions. In December 2017 two men pleaded guilty to trafficking a vulnerable 19-year-old woman who was compelled to carry drugs from London to Swansea (Guardian, 13 April 2018). After an exchange on social media, she had been lured into a car and driven to South Wales. Her mobile phone had been destroyed, and she had been beaten and forced to store Class A drugs inside her. One estimate is that thirteen thousand people in the UK are held in slavery.

In a Bangladesh town, Rohingya refugees from Myanmar were trafficked to Malaysia, sometimes paying for the journey, sometimes taken in by promises of relatively high wages (New York Times, 23 July 2015). It began as a small-scale operation but gradually became much larger, even involving people being abducted so they could be trafficked. As many as twenty-five thousand made the journey in the first three months of 2015. People would be held in camps and their families asked for a ransom before they were released; and mass graves were discovered. It became a multi-million-dollar business, and any arrests were confined to low-level participants, rather than the police or politicians who were rumoured to be involved.

The US food industry makes much use of trafficked workers, in restaurants, bars and agriculture (npr.org, 29 March 2017). The workers come mostly from Asia and Latin America, are housed in squalid conditions, have no medical care, and can be controlled by being threatened with deportation. Poor knowledge of English helps to isolate them and makes it hard for them to fight against their situation.

The border between Nepal and India is a busy route for traffickers. Often men make contact with girls on Facebook, and then convince them to leave their families and run away with them, but with the sole aim of selling them to a brothel once they are over the border in India. One woman who now helps to spot trafficking victims at a border post said, ‘My boyfriend sold one of my kidneys and then he sold me. I am only alive today because I was rescued’ (Guardian, 8 February).

In 2017 the US State Department published a comprehensive report on human trafficking. The then Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, noted there that trafficking robs human beings of their freedom and dignity. But he also stated that it ‘distorts global markets’ and ‘undermines the rule of law’. This is one reason why capitalism is opposed to trafficking and so attempts to stop or at least restrict it: it disrupts the ‘proper’ functioning of the profit and market system. If some employers can get round laws relating to minimum wages, health and safety, and workers’ abilities to defend their working conditions, they are likely to make bigger profits than those who abide by such regulations. Politicians and so on may have moral objections to trafficking, but there are economic arguments too.

Slavery is fundamentally different from wage labour. Whatever the restrictions on workers who sell their labour power for a wage, slaves and trafficked workers are in a far worse situation. They have their whole lives controlled by those who own them, and cannot stand up for themselves in any way. Their living and working conditions are much inferior to even the most badly-paid and insecure wage workers.

The causes of slaving and trafficking are not hard to see. A few people make massive profit from such activities, while far more – often desperate and perhaps somewhat naive – are fooled into thinking that they have found a way to get on in the world, or coerced into working for a slave master. Basically it is their poverty that causes them to be trafficked, a situation that is likely to continue for as long as capitalism does.

Paul Bennett

A New Slave Trade (2018)

From the June 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Football can fulfil the dreams of a young boy and his family trying to escape poverty. Around the world but especially in Africa boys are inspired by the players such as the current icon, Egypt’s and Liverpool’s, Mo Salah, that they see on TV. They learn of the wealth associated with international football stars, coming to believe that a career in football is a way out of destitution. For many young Africans, the rags to riches stories of the professional football player offers a route to the trappings associated with a lavish lifestyle.

But as well as hope there is greed, with unscrupulous shady football agents luring under-age talented players from Africa and South America then abandoning them if they fail to make their mark. 

‘Whoever does make it, can earn lots of money,’ said Cristophe Gleizes, a French journalist who wrote a book on the modern enslavement of African footballers. ‘African players are handled as traded goods, as if they were a kilo of cacao or cotton. European clubs come here to find cheap labour.’

15,000 young players are moved from West Africa each year under false pretences, estimates the charity Foot Solidaire, but a lack of monitoring means the number being trafficked abroad could be far higher.

The greater the success of African players, the more unaccredited academies spring up. Most demand fees from the children’s parents, who often take their children out of normal schooling to concentrate on football full-time. Since having a professional footballer in the family would be the financial equivalent of a lottery win, many reckon the risk to their child’s education worth taking. Middlemen haggle over the best players with the hope of making a lucrative return by selling the boys on to clubs in Europe, signing some as young as seven on binding pre-contracts – effectively buying the kids from their families. They also demand travel-costs from the families, taking the deeds on houses as security. This process of exploitation is raising alarm among NGOs including Save the Children and Caritas.

‘This football-related trafficking and the widespread creation of so-called schools of excellence is an area of huge growing concern for Save The Children,’ says Heather Kerr, the charity’s Ivory Coast country manager.

Tony Baffoe, the former Ghana captain, admits that ‘the trafficking of children to play football is a reality we must all face’.

The BBC in 2015 reported that African footballers as young as 14 years were being traded to Laos to attend a fictitious football academy. Champasak United, a club which plays in Laos’ top league, had imported 23 under-aged players intending to profit by selling the players on at a later stage. They became illegal immigrants after their visas ran out and the boys rarely left the stadium where they both lived and worked every day. The youths told the BBC they were poorly fed, rarely paid and received no medical assistance despite contracting malaria and typhoid because of the conditions. One described their existence at Champasak United as akin to ‘slave work’. As a result of the expose in April the Laos Football Federation (LFF) was fined 690,000 Swiss francs by Fifa.

‘It’s important to dream,’ says Jean-Claude Mbvoumin, a former Cameroonian international, ‘but the dreams about football now are not realistic.’

Every year hundreds of young African players come to Europe in the hope of striking it rich. A handful make it but far more fail.

Raffaele Poli, a Swiss academic, has studied the career paths of African footballers in Europe. He looked at 600 players who played in the top European leagues in 2002. Four years later, only 13 percent had progressed upwards. A third had simply disappeared from professional football. Players are simply abandoned on the streets by their agents when they fail a trial or have their contract terminated.

The so-called agents are not the only ones making a profit. The European clubs benefit, too. In Africa serious money is being invested to operate academies or to buy a share in a minor league club. Just one top-class player every five years would cover the running costs of these accredited academies.

Football puts a price on players and talks of  “buying”,  “selling”,  or “giving out on loan” them. Footballers are real commodities influenced by market forces such as supply and demand and there exists a business akin to the slave-trade to make profits out of people.

ALJO

Rear View: Much Ado About Nothing (2018)

The Rear View Column from the January 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much Ado About Nothing

The capitalist class, as a result of their control of the means of mental production, focus the attention of the working class on things that are often of little concern or consequence e.g. reality television, royalty or republicanism.  In an article titled Meghan Markle Can’t Save the World we read: ‘A just world will not only be one where outmoded institutions like the monarchy no longer exist, no matter how glamorous, charming, and well-meaning today’s royals are. It’s also one where we won’t need any more celebrity humanitarians’ (jacobin.mag, 1 December).  Yet a world without royal parasites would not necessarily be a just world.  Napoleon III ceased to rule France in 1870 and the USA did away with the monarchy a century earlier (although Trump is doing a good impersonation of George III), but neither can be considered just.  That will have to wait until we focus on securing a world without war and want, one without states and their leaders royal or otherwise.

As They Like It

Freedom fighters, past and present, so often championed by the Left for seeking justice, whether successful or not, play Game of Thrones often at the cost of working class lives.  What has the replacement of one set of rulers by another achieved?  Enter stage Left King and Queen Ortega, the recently deposed King Mugabe, and soon to be crowned Evo Morales.  ‘. . . Bolivia, along with Nicaragua, is now the only presidential democracy in the Americas to place no limits on re-election. Last month, a senior minister shared an image of a placard which invited Morales to stay in power until 2050’ (theguardian.com, 3 December). Elsewhere (unz.com, 30 November) we are reminded that ‘all three South African Presidents supported Robert Mugabe.’ Socialists would instead point to the election of the Mandela to power.  This event was supposed to see the grinding poverty of the townships ended, but he, Mbeki and Zuma have turned out to be powerless to run capitalism in a way that would end exploitation and poverty.  Mbeki is responsible for the premature deaths of up to 365,000 AIDS victims. King Zuma has his palace.

‘You take my life if you do take the means whereby I live’

Socialists are in agreement with Shakespeare here.  This is precisely the position for the great majority of us today. The means whereby we live — society’s natural and industrial resources — are monopolized by a minority who thus form a privileged class. This is the basis of present-day society the world over,  Workers die slowly or prematurely in the service of King Capital.  Everything is for sale.  ‘The widely condemned slavery in Libya goes beyond the sale of human beings as some ‘slave masters’ engage in organ trade, a private legal practitioner reveals. Organ trade is the trade of human organs, tissues or other body parts for the purpose of transplantation.  According to Bobby Banson, he has seen videos, where at least one person caught up in the slavery alleged that body parts of his colleagues were harvested and sold abroad. “One of the persons I heard, said the truth is that they are not sold to go and work, but their human parts are harvested… kidney, liver are in high demand in these areas”‘ (ghanaweb.com, 2 December).

First we kill all the lawyers

Tempting, but no: the law is an instrument of the owning class, that pretends to be for everyone, but is only for the rich.  Prince Laurent, brother to the King of Belgium, ‘says proposed pay cut would breach his human rights’ (theguardian.com, 1 December)!  Apparently, the prime minister is threatening to cut his annual £280,000 government endowment.  ‘Laurent’s lawyer insists that “in humiliating ways” the prince has been stopped all his life from getting a job, in a manner damaging to his “image and, dare I add, his health”. “In this traditional view, a prince was not allowed to work (it would testify to ‘a desire for money’, a reproach that some people dare to repeat today, which is the world upside down!),” the lawyer writes.’  Anatole France knew better, writing of ‘the majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’ The law isn’t an ass. It’s an instrument of class domination, a very powerful one which will continue until a majority of us come to understand and desire socialism.  Then the world will be truly turned upside down.

Material World: Body Parts (2015)

The Material World Column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In capitalism, anything can be sold for a profit, including human beings. The sickening trades in humans whether as bonded labour or sex slaves is still prevalent. Selling body parts is now a normal everyday business. Organs Watch conservatively estimates that at least 10,000 kidneys are sold each year and generates an illicit profit of around a billion dollars a year. Organ trafficking is the commercialisation of medicine: more transplants mean more profit. Everything that is happening is a ‘donation’, but in real life, it is selling and buying.

This buying and selling transplant organs is illegal almost everywhere yet the trade persists, as a result of two major flaws in the transplant system, according to experts. First, the law does not prohibit anyone from billing for the services involved in transplanting organs. This provides doctors and hospitals with a financial incentive to perform transplants, while the costs of the organ are absorbed into the larger transaction and easily hidden from view. The second flaw is the practice of making organ donation anonymous. You can buy an organ without knowing where it came from, and it thus becomes mere tissue rather than part of a human being. Anonymity does not merely dehumanise donors; it also endangers them by making it easier for buyers and brokers to escape accountability for deaths and injuries.

The organ trade follows a clear pattern: rich people buy the organs, and poor people sell them. Organ trafficking depends on several factors. One is people in distress. They are economically disadvantaged. On the demand side are people who could die if they don't receive an organ transplant. Then there are the well-connected organ brokers, who arrange the deals between sellers and buyers. Well-equipped clinics and medical staff are needed. Unlike other forms of trafficking, the organ trade unites the respectable from the highest levels of society, such as laboratory technicians and the surgeons with the disreputable of the lowest strata of society – con-men and criminals, those brutal enforcers who make sure that ‘willing’ sellers actually lie on the operating table once it is realised by them what is actually entailed and they begin to understand how they have been cheated.

Few are informed or educated enough to give consent. They do not comprehend the seriousness of the surgery or what they are likely to face in respect to the possible incapacity to resume their normally physically demanding jobs. Organ brokers have told them the fairy tale of ‘the sleeping kidney’: one kidney sleeps, the other kidney works, so people don’t need two kidneys. Doctors wake up the sleeping kidney and take away the old kidney to give it to the recipient. Those selling their kidneys often receive more invasive surgery than necessary because buyers want to avoid extra expense. Many donors will have unnecessarily long scars of about 15 to 20 inches on their bodies, not knowing that if the brokers or recipients paid just a little bit more, the surgeons could have used laparoscopic surgery, which requires an incision as small as 3 or 4 inches.

Doctors say a kidney operation is a routine procedure; it saves a life and there is no harm to the donors. The whole recruitment of donors is a package of deception, manipulating the uneducated poor. The middlemen beyond taking large profits, encourage the trade by assuring buyers that the transaction is conducted ethically and that the medical benefits justify what would otherwise be seen as exploitation.

‘The crimes are covered up,’ Scott Carney writes in his book The Red Market ‘in a veil of altruistic ideals.’ Carney estimates he is personally worth $250,000 if he was sold for body parts. ‘. . . bodies are unquestionably commodities . . . As a product, bodies aren't assembled new in factories filled with sterile suited workers; rather they are harvested like used cars at scrap markets. Before you can write a check and pick up human tissue, someone needs to transform it from a tiny piece of humanity into something with a market value . . .’

There are those who will say ‘so what?’ And in a world where money can buy anything, and everything is fair game for profit-makers, what's to stop people from turning human parts into another commodity? In a world that is governed by the principle of supply and demand, where those with money can buy anything, the inevitable result is a world in which rich recipients look for markets where they can buy body parts. The sad reality is that some poor person somewhere in the world will be forced to sell.

Capitalism can indeed be described as being vampire-like, sucking the life out of the poor, imagery often used by Marx.

ALJO

Buying People (2008)

Book Review from the February 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking and Resistance' by Louisa Waugh

The Olga of the title is a Moldovan woman who was earning 35p a day working in an outdoor market. In desperation she and a friend replied to a newspaper ad promising well-paid jobs abroad, and were told they would be caring for elderly people in Italy. They ended up being sold to a bar-owner in Kosovo, where they were forced to work as prostitutes. After two years Olga managed to escape and returned to her home town, where she was housed and supported by the International Organisation for Migration. During her time in Kosovo she was beaten so badly that she lost almost 70 per cent of her sight.

Louisa Waugh's book is full of appalling stories such as this, of women trafficked into the sex industry and forced to 'repay' those who arranged their journey and employment. Not all trafficking involves sex slaves, however, and many of those smuggled to other countries work in construction and agriculture, among other industries. The International Labour Office estimates that two and a half million people are caught up in trafficking, though others give far higher figures. In Moldova it has become one of the largest national industries, while Albania is another big source of trafficked women.

And what are the causes of this shocking 'industry'? One is the fact that many men are willing to pay for sex, so pimps can make a profit from it. But on the supply side the answer is one simple word: poverty. Waugh quotes the director of an organisation called the Useful Women of Albania: "Women are trafficked from Albania because they are desperate to leave in the first place . . .if women are living here in poverty and they have nothing, then they will sell the only thing they can make money from: their own bodies." The line between those who are trafficked and those who migrate 'freely' is a thin one. A report for Save the Children referred to "a steady rise in emigration for voluntary prostitution abroad in order to escape poverty and bleak futures in Albania." But prostitution can rarely be voluntary in any real sense, and few of the women who migrate in order to earn money from selling sex are prepared for precisely what awaits them.

Many governments in Western Europe, including the UK, have addressed the problem of trafficking by cracking down on illegal immigration. But this has only led to the creation of an underclass of undocumented migrants, a group which includes those who died in Morecambe Bay in 2004. Forced labour — not confined to sex work — is an important part of the British economy, for capitalism wants cheap and pliant labour power. The extremes to which it will sometimes go to obtain it, graphically depicted in Waugh's pages, show why it's necessary to get rid of this diabolical system.

Paul Bennett

Further Reading:

Use My Name "Two women, Olga in Moldova and Bright from Nigeria, talk to Louisa Waugh about their experiences." (From the September 2007 issue of the New Internationalist.)