Adrianne Shropshire
Sweatshops will end poverty as we know it
"Africa desperately needs Western help in the form of schools, clinics and sweatshops". And so begins the dumbest opinion piece ever written. In his op-ed published yesterday, NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof puts forward his version of the "any job" approach to ending poverty in Africa.
To begin with, it is offensive (not to mention stupid) to suggest that the staggering poverty that we stand witness to in Africa can be solved simply with the proliferation of sweatshops. The issues are large and complicated and are deeply rooted in a history of exploitation and non-investment from the West. From gross post-colonial under-development to modern day structural readjustment programs that reduce African nations (and other developing countries) to being forced participants in promoting the economic priorities of the West over their own domestic priorities.
"Well-meaning American university students regularly campaign against sweatshops. But instead, anyone who cares about fighting poverty should campaign in favor of sweatshops, demanding that companies set up factories in Africa". Huh? Let me make sure that I understood that. If we want to end poverty we should support economic strategies, like the proliferation of sweatshops, that will insure its entrenchment. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.
Are we really blaming Sweatshop Watch and United Students Against Sweatshops for poverty in Africa? They raised the profile around issue of exploitation and exposed the corporate behavior of US companies, like Nike, outside of our boarders. We should be thanking them for putting a spotlight on working conditions, child labor, and yes, the obscene difference between what it costs to produce a sweatshirt and what it is sold for on college campuses.
Ironically, the piece actually makes the case that it is the lack of infrastructure in poor countries that make it difficult for stable industries to take root, not 20 year old college students from Oregon. So back to that old lack of investment and misplaced priorities thing again and we can through in corrupt governments supported by the US for good measure.
In a similar piece, Paul Krugman lectures his critics by asserting that "... as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress...". Yes of course, because demanding decent wages would be out of the question. And debt relief, so that poor countries can focus their resources on domestic priorities well, now that's just crazy talk.
The whole argument in both of these pieces is disgustingly reminiscent of arguments to maintain slavery in the US. "Without slavery, what will they do? How will they eat? Where will they live? We're actually doing them a favor". Exploitation is better than nothing.
Now we allegedly care about "security". And we apparently have some understanding that there is a direct relationship between poverty and instability in the world. President Bush is suddenly concerned about "instability in Somalia". Ya think? Sweatshops are defined by their exploitation of men, women, and children. They produce poverty. Exploitation produces resentment, and we know the rest. So why on earth would we be advancing a sweatshop proliferation strategy? There is a high road out of poverty and we should stop pretending that we can't find it.
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Posted at 8:46 AM, Jun 07, 2006 in
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