[D66] Foxconn strikes and the global class struggle

[Antid Oto]

Foxconn strikes and the global class struggle
10 October 2012

Protests and strikes by thousands of Chinese workers against the 
oppressive conditions in the huge sweatshops operated by the world’s 
largest electronics manufacturer, Foxconn, have raised important issues 
for the international working class.

In recent decades, to justify the monstrous growth of financial 
parasitism in the West, bourgeois economists have repeatedly proclaimed 
that, with the rise of “the information economy,” the creation of value 
is no longer dependent on the actual production process. As a result, 
they declare, the fundamentals of Marxism, in particular the 
revolutionary role of the working class as the bearer of the modern 
productive forces and a higher form of economic organisation—that is 
socialism—are “outdated.” Apple, now the world’s largest company, by 
stock market valuation ($US600 billion), is offered as “proof,” as it 
appears to make huge profits without operating any manufacturing facilities.

The labour unrest in Foxconn, which manufactures Apple’s iPhone5, among 
many other items, has effectively debunked this myth. Corporations like 
Apple are only able to amass profit by sitting at the apex of a vast 
global food chain for extracting surplus value from the working class. 
At the bottom are ruthless cheap labour manufacturers like Foxconn, 
which employs some 1.1 million workers in China alone. Its giant 
factories, such as the one at Zhengzhou, which houses nearly 200,000 
workers, make the latest electronics goods. The very existence of 
Foxconn graphically confirms the validity of the classical Marxist 
theory that surplus value and thus profit derives from the labour of the 
working class. The eruption of workers’ protests at Foxconn foreshadows 
the emergence of revolutionary struggles of the working class in China 
as part of a growing movement internationally.


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John Chan

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/pers-o10.shtml