Slog Comments

Now that incomes in Southeast Asia are rising, and workers there are starting to demand more rights and better pay, it may soon become unprofitable to import goods from this region. Once that happens, one has to ask where Wal-Mart will go to obtain goods. Parts of Africa are starting to develop to a level where they could be exploitable. Wages there are so low. The many problems in these regions are going to have to be addressed first, including endemic disease patterns, warfare, corrupt regimes and non-existent infrastructure.

While it is true that capitalism is a monstrous system in almost every respect, it does produce change much more rapidly than the feudal regimes currently extant in places like Swaziland. If this last undeveloped continent is finally brought to a stage where the working class there can be exploited for their labor, we might see the beginning of the end for capitalism.

Since capitalism is now a totally global system. Almost every nation on the planet is in the WTO now. The only ones that aren't are places like Somalia where there is no real social order present. Socialism cannot exist in competition with such a system, except for a watered down and ineffective form of socialism such as those advocated by the British and Australian Labor Parties and the NDP of Canada. The absurd attempts at socialism that existed in the 20th century weren't socialist in any meaningful way. Perhaps the one that came closest was Yugoslavia, but even that could only exist with the benefit of heavy subsidies from capitalist states who saw it as a bulwark against the USSR. In any event, no real socialist state has ever existed or ever could exist until the entire globe first experienced capitalism. Indeed, if socialism ever were realized, the very concept of a "state" would become redundant.

And we may be on the verge of that precursor's occurrence. Africa and several island states such as Tonga remain the last pre-capitalist holdouts on the planet. Should Wal-Mart, in an attempt to overcome the drop in profits described in this article, decide to follow the Chinese lead and begin developing Africa to a stage where the workers there could be exploited, the beginning of the end of this system may be initiated at long last.

Wal-Mart will need a very good incentive to do so, like the threat of near bankruptcy. Africa's challenges are numerous and intimidating. It remains questionable as to whether one company (even one as rich as Wal-Mart) could begin to make a difference there. The Chinese though have developed a toe-hold there, so its obvious that they see some profit in the enterprise. Should American corporations see the same, we might soon see a serious effort being made to combat malaria, cholera, yellow fever, and the numerous other local plagues. We might see pressure brought at long last to corrupt dictatorships that the world has heretofore ignored, such as Mugabe, al-Bashir, and Moseveni. Since workers dying of HIV at very young ages are not able to work, the capitalist system might finally topple Mswati's heartless family, who have let over half their countrymen contract the disease with no hope of treatment.

Is this a good thing? In a sense yes, in another sense, no. While much existing pain is going to be alleviated as a side effect of capitalist exploitation, it is neither the central focus nor is it something that will occur in the interests of those being relieved of it. It will be done merely to provide low cost labor to companies such as Wal Mart so they can lower the cost of t-shirts from $5 (already too expensive) to something more profitable, like maybe 50 cents. In the end, workers wages in America will be slashed even further. Unions will be broken even more than they have been in the past. This will be done to keep down labor costs, and will go as far as it can before Wal Mart finally gives in and starts developing a production market that it can afford in Africa.

On the other hand, an end to malaria is a dream that mankind has pursued fruitlessly as long as history records. The realization of an end to the horrible and murderous paramilitaries that plague Africa will mean that people will no longer have to live in terror of the likes of Kony, the ICU, and the Interhamwe. The government of the DRC will no longer be a fiction, even if it will become a puppet regime of the corporate interests like the rest of us. First world problems such as obesity will displace real problems such as trachoma.

And it is necessary that this event occur if socialism is ever to come about.