I was watching David Harvey's 2019 Capital series. While going through Marx's analysis of capitalism, he decides to use Foxconn & China as an example of social relations & commodity fetishism.
Video in Question: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=1Sgo9I61gOI&list=PLWvnUfModHP9Ci8M1g39l4AZgK6YLCXd0&index=1
Timestamp 1:26:00-1:31:00
spoiler
During this segment he talks about worker suicides at Foxconn. How in response they needed to buy suicide nets. He argues that when China opened up to the world market the Foxconn suicides were a natural cause of the capitalism they exposed themselves too. He argues that the Chinese government couldn't understand this principle, and failed at controlling the horrors capitalism brings. Next, in a patronizing way, wonders 'if Deng Xiaoping even read this stuff (Marx's Capital)'. Then proceeds to accuse Deng of willfully exposing his population 'to the horrible conditions of places like Foxconn'. Finally he presumes Deng would answer, 'yes, but its okay because we all have wealth and cell phones now'!
Timestamp 1:53:00-1:55:00
spoiler
David continues to clutch his pearls at the horrors of Foxconn. David then once again assumes Deng's answer to if he understood capital/capitalism, and what opening up the market would do. Saying, 'Yes I read it I know perfectly well that this is what we have to go through to deal with the rising productivity of labor. The only way we can do that is through market competition and this will create alienation, inequality, and exploitation'. Then the noble David Harvey dunks on his straw man argument saying, 'Alright, having done that, how can you still justify what it is your doing?' Finally he leaves whether China will become socialist by 2050 as an open question, some say yes, some say no.
TLDR: China=Bad/Capitalist/1984, Foxconn Suicide Nets, Deng & the CPC are a bunch of dummies, sweatshops.
Throughout the series he sprinkles in bits of anti-China rhetoric but these two segments particularly stood out to me. Now, to be clear, this post isn't meant as an attack on David. I want to use these criticisms as a learning experience, I'm here for the truth. These are arguments I've heard many times before among liberals.
So what's the deal with Foxconn & the suicide nets? What are the working conditions like inside China, is it the sweatshop hell liberals claim it to be? Did Deng betray the revolution and turn China capitalist? I would like as much information on these broad topics as possible please. Bonus points if it's a source I can share with the next lib who asks me these questions.
excerpt from this post from the GitHub page in the sidebar:
True, in Foxconn which is a Taiwanese factory, located in Shenzhen which is special economic zone designed to attract foreign capital. And the suicide rate amongst the workers is low. 11 suicides in one year amongst 500000 employees, so like 1:45000. Chinese average is like 1 out of 10000 people. It's below national average.
there are unfortunately no citations, but it's true that Foxconn is based on Taiwan, which IIRC means that the CPC has/had less control over how they operate than companies based on the mainland
Thank you for this. I looked it up before posting and could only get unsourced information. Which is why I posted this, hoping that maybe someone out there had a reference that either confirms or denies this.
well, it's still unsourced, take the comments about suicides with a grain of salt
Excusing workplace suicides by comparing to the national average is such garbage. The suicide rate for any factory should be 0%. That's like if an American handwaved away a school shooting because the firearm death rate for the given school was less than in the whole country.
I assumed they meant suicide among the workers in general rather than suicides at the workplace; if it's the latter, that's still really bad, yeah
assuming there were nets, they could have put them up after "just" one workplace suicide, but it's certainly a scummy thing for a company to do rather than improving working conditions
I think the whole suicide net discourse isn't as grim as people think it is. I mean people can be depressed due to a lot of reasons other than work. But since you spend a lot of time at work the suicide risk there is accordingly high. Depression can be silent for the people around you until it's too late. Every person who doesn't die because of the nets is someone who now has a chance of getting better instead of being dead. It's not like the jumpers are dragged back into the factory and chained to their workplace afterwards so they can't try to kill themselves afterwards again. Like the whole suicide nets so horrible argument makes only sense if you believe they are there so workers can't even escape the horrible working conditions by killing themselves.
true; it's not like they couldn't commit suicide outside of work, but it's framed as "the CCP won't even let workers kill themselves"
I dunno if they're still up, but they put nets on at least the dormitories of their company town. And several people have killed themselves there though I can't find whether it's while on the clock or at their dorm
