Nowadays Pyramid factories don’t exist any longer, also because we couldn’t easily find grown-up slaves for their construction. But there are multinational companies or anyhow industries of every kind for which labour at very low price means the possibility itself of existing.
The availability of workers at a really very low cost (child labour) is once again supplied by the surplus of children. According the calculations of the Unicef and Ilo ( International Labour Organization ) children workers are, all over the world, at least 250 million, 44 of them only in India. In Bangladesh a fourth of all children’s population is engaged in textile industry[1]. In Thailandia 32% of all working force is represented by children who are used in the production of articles and objects for export.
In the Philippines official child workers are 220 thousand, in Nigeria 12 million, in Brazil 7 million. Having a job allows this big mass of minors to survive and offers their families the possibility of producing some more children, they also destined inevitably to become baby workers.
The problem becomes complicated when the child loses his figure of human being, holder of rights, even if minimal, and becomes a real product to be sold and bought: slave business has become the business of the XXI century; besides adoption or sexual exploitation, many of these slave children are destined to the labour market; their price goes from one to two hundred dollars.
In some cases their traffic assumes the features of the black slave trade of ancient memory. Everybody remembers the “slave ship” loaded with children and boys, whose presence was signalled in April 2001 in the gulf of Guinea and transfers of masses of young black slaves are monthly reported at the frontier between Burkina Faso and Benin, to the cotton plantations of which children are addressed, just as their ancestors were to the ones of the southern United States.
The problem of baby workers would have remained one of the so many news stories if it hadn’t happened that one of the industries, which make use of child labour most, is the one that manufactures footballs
India exports, annually, footballs for about 30 million dollars, but it’s Pakistan that with its thousands of little factories, all of them around the town of Sialkot,manufactures 80% of leather footballs of he whole world: a total of 35 million balls a year. Many famous western multinational companies have been accused, rightly or wrongly, to make use of child labour at low cost through their foreign suppliers.
The existence of child workers and slaves is caused, according to our thesis, by the surplus of their production which depends on the poverty of the families that produce these children. As a value children represent for the family producing them the possibility of survival and further production.
A confirmation of this thesis is that when poverty and overproduction of children exist, but no industry which can absorb child labour, new ” forms of industry “ that can absorb baby-workers form purposely.
Poverty and surplus of child-product produce industry and business which claim the production of further children for this industry.
The low price which is paid to proletarian producers prevents them from buying means of production different from genitals they already own and nourishes the market by creating the need of new ” forms of industry “ to absorb the only producible product: children.
That of begging is the most evident example. In Balkan countries, destroyed by political and war events, there are no industries which can absorb the surplus of children. In the neighbouring countries, like Italy, placing child labour at low cost isn’t so simple as in Asiatic Countries, also because in some Italian regions there are situations of poverty and surplus of children similar to the ones of Balkan Countries.
Baby beggars, bought for few thousands euros from the families of origin and exploited for begging at our traffic lights, represent a business created just to place the child product in the Italian social-economic situation.
In confirmation of this, in some cases the families of origin of a town in central Morocco were the ones to pay[2] the traffickers of minors just to place their own product; once in Italy, the proceeds of the daily work as windscreen washers at the traffic lights partly were kept by the exploiters and partly left to the boys so that they could send them to their families[3]. Always for want of productive activities of any kind, where the surplus of children can have vent, war absorbs the product in excess.
[1] If a fire breaks out in one of these factories where about 1000 persons are packed for every shift and the only exit door is closed for “safety” reasons obviously the dead and the wounded, above all children, may be very many:110 deaths in the last few years; 50 in the only episode which took place at Shibpur, 30 kilometres east Dacca, the capital.
[2] From three to five thousand euros.
[32] The criminal aspect, connected to the tortures the gangs of exploiters subject their slaves to when the proceeds of a begging day are considered insufficient, doesn’t have to make us forget the problem of origin and the fact that anyhow, with their “job”, they contribute to support the family of origin and allow the latter to produce some more children also destined to the exploitation or if provided with aggressiveness genes to become an exploiter,too.
Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci
To be continued in :
2) Child Soldier (Child Labour Second Part)
3) Scraps of Production (Child Labour Third Part)
Ferdinando Gargiulo offers you a new perspective on why new viral epidemics, assaults, infanticides, suicide epidemics and even environmental catastrophes. Always engaged in his research decides to create a blog to offer his readers content of high value.