Slavery in Bangkok (1984)

TV Review from the March 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Song of the Shirt 1984

A recent report on ITV’s “World in Action” programme showed the misfortunes of employment in the “sweat shops” of Bangkok. Here for less that £1.00 a day, girls often as young as eleven or twelve manufacture clothes for sale in the West. The hours are long, usually fifteen a day, and many work through the night. Food is provided by their benevolent employer, who of course makes the appropriate deduction from their wages. Often the girls sleep on the premises, which can shelter as many as one hundred and have no chairs, tables or even beds. The girls are often beaten and abused by their employers. So why put up with such conditions? The only alternative in the sex capital of the world is prostitution. Brothels arc plentiful and girls as young as ten or eleven are individually numbered and priced depending on their age and maturity.

The clothes produced by these “sweat shops" are sold through stores such as Debenhams, C & A. Littlewoods and Great Universal Stores, whose profit last year was £200 million. By patronising such stores, are we supporting those who are enslaved in the Far East? What should we do? Perhaps only buy those goods manufactured in “respectable" European countries? Is it realistic in a world whose values are dominated by money to expect that people will pay more for clothes produced elsewhere when they can save by purchasing the cheap clothes produced in Bangkok?

Ironically, if the working class were prepared not to support the capitalists who enslave such people, there would be nothing in the shops for them to buy. Slavery is not confined to the Far East. As society is presently constituted we all sell our abilities to other people. Our “democratic” society tells us that we must spend our lives producing wealth for others if we are to live at all. In return for the sale of our abilities and talents, capitalists will provide us with the means by which we can survive and produce yet more wealth for them. So what is the alternative? In a rational society, people would both produce and possess the wealth they create. Such a society would create the things that were needed, rather than for profit. This would be a socialist society.

Ian Stuart