Exploitation in Migrant Labour Camps

Abstract

As is well known, a major thesis of Marx's Catital is that the capitalist exploits workers by paying them a wage which only sustains them, while at the same time extracting surplus value from their endeavours. In developing this idea, Marx outlined numerous instances of exploitation, not only in terms of wages, but in repect to working conditions. As members of the working class have formed unions and improved their economic situation, it is difficult for the social scientist ofthe I970S to fully comprehend the character of economic relations of the I850Sa period which seems to some almost as distant as the Middle Ages and with institutions as anachronistic. The behaviour andattitudes ofthe capitalists of the nineteenth-century seem characteristic of an alien and unenlightened period, but one which is past. Yet, in the I970S in modern industrial societies, there remain vestiges of the exploitation of workers, an exploitation which is similar to that so vividly described by Marx. An examination of these instances provides a greater understanding of the character of exploitation. It is the purpose of this paper to examine one such instance an instance which occurs paradoxically in a wealthy and democratic society, many of whose members believe that exploitation occurs elsewhere but not in their own society. That instance is exploitation in migrant farm labour camps in the United States.l After describing life in labour camps, we will attempt to shed some further light on the nature of exploitation as a recurring social phenomenon. In this paper, exploitation will be used in two ways: (I) the payment of subsistence wages by a capitalist to workers who in turn produce surplus value for the capitalist, and (2) the 'use' of one worker by another for the second worker's personal gain. We will describe some of the speciSc mechanisms whereby farm owners, or their representa-