Free Labour Market Research Articles

Work and Modesty: The Dilemma of Women Market Traders in South India

Capitalism, which supposedly develops a free market for labor, does not in fact do so. Gender differences persist, or are accentuated, in societies undergoing capitalist transformation, so that women as workers tend to remain excluded or, at best, marginalized. But as one scholar has noted, we are far better at describing that phenomenon than at explaining its causes and origins.' Yet the question of women's economic marginality remains vitally important because everywhere female poverty and dependence, stemming from women's peripheral access to work and wages, are at the root of so many of women's other social disabilities. The question takes on further urgency as more of the world's population leaves subsistence agriculture -where women generally have a traditional role and some access to the means of production -to turn to wage labor for a living. In such a situation of expanding wage labor, women in many countries find themselves unable to compete equally for work, either in the formal labor market or in the far more extensive informal labor market of low-paid and frequently temporary jobs. India provides a good example of these dilemmas. Economic change and increased urbanization have left many sectors of the population in great poverty and misery. The general level of household poverty, which might be expected to drive more women into the paid work force, does not seem to have done so uniformly. In fact, India's census statistics show a falling rate of female employment in this century, so that women, overwhelmingly concentrated in the informal sector, made up 34.4 percent of the country's total work force in 1911, 31.5 percent in 1961, but

Coffee and Rural Proletarianization: A Comment on Bergad

In a recent article in this journal, Dr Bergad argues that the production of coffee for the export economy in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico was accompanied by the emergence of a rural proletariat, and suggests that the latter process in fact predated the development of a sugar plantation economy in the twentieth century, with which capitalist free wage labour is commonly associated. This characterization of the coffee hacienda workforce raises definitional problems on which I would like to comment. This characterization of the coffee hacienda workforce raises definitional problems on which I would like to comment. Illustrating with examples from coffee-producing areas in Latin America and sugar-producing areas in the Caribbean, I shall argue that the increased demand for labour-power arising from the expansion of an export-oriented yet labour-intensive capitalist agriculture in a location where labour is scarce is met not by free wage labour but rather by recourse to unfree labour. In these circumstances, competition for labour-power results paradoxically in the attempt by capitalists to restrict the free movement of labour and the consequent formation of a free labour market.

Slavery in Nineteenth Century Egypt

In nineteenth-century Egypt Circassian females were mostly kept in the harems of wealthy Turks, the concubines of ‘middle class’ Egyptians generally were Abyssinians, while male and female Negro slaves were used for domestic service by almost all layers of Egyptian society. In addition to domestic service, black slaves were used as soldiers by Egypt's rulers and, contrary to the prevalent assumption, as agricultural workers on the farms of the Muḥammad Alī family and elsewhere in Upper Egypt and during periods of prosperity and shortage of labour also in Lower Egypt. Apparently there were at least 30,000 slaves in Egypt at different times of the nineteenth century, and probably many more.White slaves were brought to Egypt from the eastern coast of the Black Sea and from the Circassian settlements of Anatolia via Istanbul. Brown and black slaves were brought (a) from Darfur to Asyūṭ, directly or through Kordofan; (b) from Sennar to Isnā; (c) from the area of the White Nile; (d) from Bornu and Wadāy via Libya and the Western Desert; (e) from Abyssinia and the East African coast through the Red Sea. The slave dealers in Egypt were mainly people from Upper Egypt and the Oases, beduin and villagers of the Buḥayra province. They were divided into dealers in black and in white slaves and organized in a guild with a shaykh. Cairo was the great depot of slaves and the centre of the trade, but a very important occasion for trading in slaves was the annualmawlidof Ṭanṭā.Official measures taken against the slave-trade were among the important causes for the final disappearance of slavery in Egypt. These were, amongst others, the appointment of foreigners, mainly British, as governors of the Sudan and commanders of special missions to suppress the trade; two Anglo-Egyptian conventions, of 1877 and of 1895, for the suppression of slavery; and, from 1877 on, the establishment of offices and later a special service for the fight against the trade and for the manumission of slaves. However, were it not for the internal development of Egyptian society, these measures could never have succeeded; this is illustrated by the tremendous obstacles they encountered and their ineffectiveness for a long time. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century most of these impediments vanished. In addition to the Mahdist revolution and the reconquest of the Sudan, the most important change was the emergence of a free labour market as a result of accelerated urbanization and the collapse of the guild system. At the same time a small but important section of Egyptians had changed their attitudes towards slavery as a result of their cultural contact with Europe.

Union Wage Impact: A Nineteenth-Century Case

Recent efforts to assess the impact of unions on wage behavior, in contrast to the behavior of free competitive labor markets, have generally focused on experience during the last several decades. The findings of this article, however, suggest that the classical free labor market may have been significantly contaminated by trade unionism during the initial period of the industrialization of the American economy. Using payroll records and internal company correspondence, the author traces the development of company wage policy at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company's Chicago works, from just before the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. The analysis shows the extent to which the influence of market forces was modified by the advent of the union. The author concludes that, even as early as the 1860s, unions were essential for distributing the gains of increased productivity to workers. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

Let's Face the Strike Issue

S TRIKE PUBLICITY has passed from freshness to repetition, and if at this stage neither contestant has made explicit what is really at issue, we must conclude that both are unwilling to do so. Nor has this omission been remedied by their outside apologists or by interested government spokesmen. In his presentation of the automobile workers' case, Mr. Walter Reuther came encouragingly close to the main point when he linked wage demands with prices and profits; and employers, in their spontaneous resistance to any such linking, demonstrated their appreciation of what was at stake. But the central issue, being as revolutionary as it is simple, deserves an open appraisal unobscured by secondary controversies. There will be general agreement that throughout the growth of capitalism, owners of capital have been the makers of business enterprise decisions. The breakdown of the feudal system and the establishment of a free labor market, with workers separated from the means of production, made the individual worker dependent upon the invitation and terms of the employer. This is merely to recognize that, given an unrestricted free labor market, which in practice has meant a reservoir of unemployed containing replacements for workers unwilling to accept the terms of employers, the worker's position has been that of a dependent and in its major aspects beyond his control. And only the requirements of competition, the conscience of employers, the intercession of government, and the organized efforts of the workers themselves, have intervened to ameliorate the working conditions which might conceivably result from complete worker dependence and employer dominance. So clear is the historical development of this employer dominance in worker-employer relations, and so obvious is it as a simple matter of fact, that workers and employers alike accept it as more or less natural. And executives of business enterprise, thinking perhaps unconsciously in terms that were accepted but not necessarily applicable even when management was closely connected with ownership, actually speak of the rights of management in this sense of their being somehow inherent in