China's Twentieth Century by Wang Hui

Author:Wang Hui
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Verso Books

in the past, labour was used to designate the reality of a social production and a social objective of accumulating wealth. Even capital and surplus-value exploited it—precisely where it retained a use-value for the expanded reproduction of capital and its final destruction … Today this is no longer the case since labour is no longer productive but has become reproductive of the assignation to labour which is the general habit of a society which no longer knows whether or not it wishes to produce … It remains, however, more necessary than ever to reproduce labour as a social ritual [affectation], as a reflex, as morality, as consensus, as regulation, as the reality principle. The reality principle of the code, that is: an immense ritual of the signs of labour extends over society in general—since it reproduces itself, it matters little whether or not it produces.3

When Baudrillard published this piece, many Marxists regarded his claim about the increasing disappearance of productive labor as an interpretation of phenomena confined to post-industrial European society, holding that on a global scale the capitalist division of labor still persists—that is, that labor in the peripheral areas is still productive, and these laborers are exploited within the unequal global system.

Here we can examine another phenomenon associated with capitalism that acts as the supplement to productive labor—“nonproductive labor.” For example, during an economic crisis, investment aimed at stimulating production is undertaken specifically for the purpose of reproduction, this often taking the form of the overproduction of commodities. But in contrast to twentieth-century economic crises, the current crisis is long term. In the process of China’s current large-scale industrialization, “productive” production has constantly been in search of laborers. But under the influence of the economic crisis, overproduction and demand for this type of “reproductive labor” have become constant as well. In 2008, in order to alleviate pressure from the fiscal crisis, the Chinese government spent 4 trillion yuan as stimulus investment, causing even more overproduction. In a real sense, this too can be understood as production aimed at preserving reproduction.

In 2010, the tragedy of thirteen workers in succession committing suicide by jumping to their deaths occurred at the Foxconn factory complex in Dongguan, Guangzhou. But just as a discussion of the value of workers’ lives and their dignity began to gain popular attention, the head of Foxconn declared that one million workers would be replaced, in the future, by machines. The government, the media and the entire society immediately shifted their attention to the problem of future unemployment. The question of the dignity of workers was quickly replaced by a discussion of the problem of maintaining and reproducing the workers as a group. In Henan, a province densely packed with labor power, multinational companies recently migrated from the coastal areas are suddenly facing a labor shortage. In response, the provincial government has agreed to give large-scale companies, including the Foxconn complex at Zhengzhou, a subsidy of 200 yuan per worker every month. While this may not signify the

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