Over the past few years, the countries of the imperial core — the United States and its junior partners in Canada and NATO — have seen a startling reversal in what was once championed as a shining achievement of liberal democracy: child labor laws. History textbooks detailing the horrors of early industrial capitalism are replete with the soot-stained faces of child laborers. A relic, they claim, of a grim past, long since abandoned by today’s “enlightened” capitalists. Gone are the days of Dickensian chimney sweeps and adolescent black lung, banished to the dustbin of history by progressive reforms that ensured children could go to school and play and live carefree lives, unshackled from the horrors of exploitation.
This, of course, has always been a myth. Child labor persists both in the brutal exploitation in modern colonies, where children labor for little or no pay to produce chocolate and cobalt, as well as within the great imperialist countries themselves, where carve-outs for child agricultural workers were written into law from the very beginning. Even at its best, child labor has merely been constrained by the law, never abolished. And “its best” is quickly decaying as the empire falls apart and struggles to maintain its workforce. Those practices which were finally extinguished didn’t cease through the benevolence of the capitalists; the working class fought to keep our children out of the mines and the packing plants. This wasn’t a gift, but a hard-won victory.
When the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged, it quickly altered the landscape of every economy on the planet. Production was paused, consumption plummeted, workers stayed home to protect their lives, and in many places, the state stepped in to keep everyone afloat. Unemployment benefits and health coverage were expanded in even the most committed laissez-faire strongholds, such as the U.S. Measures such as eviction protection, aid payments, tax refunds and more were deemed necessary to prevent the entire working class from instantly collapsing into abject poverty and seeking more radical changes to the economic system. Top members of the Democratic Party have bragged that one measure, the expanded child tax credit, cut childhood poverty in the U.S. in half. Yet that truthful statement is undercut by an obvious revelation: this entire time, the state had been sitting on a tool to eliminate child poverty, used it only partially, and then, months later, opted to reverse the measure, thereby doubling childhood poverty.
Throughout the beginning stages of the ongoing pandemic, workforce participation stagnated. Workers were laid off en masse; some stayed home to protect themselves and their communities, others retired early, still more became unable to work due to disability, or simply died. The capitalists groaned and quailed, crying to their state and media cronies that “no one wants to work anymore!” Measures to protect these workers from both economic devastation and physical damage were instated only to be quickly reversed, replaced with harsh punishments for prioritizing their health. The pandemic was swiftly erased from public consciousness, meager reparations were rescinded, and unemployment began to fall, as desperate workers returned to the workforce en masse in order to make ends meet.
Still, the capitalists were not content. Unsatisfied with merely multiplying their wealth throughout this crisis, they demanded more. More production, more profit, more exploitation. So many workers dropped out of the labor market permanently, and so many are too sick to work on any given day, that the workforce availability declined by an estimated eight billion working hours in 2022 alone. This number is not captured in official unemployment metrics, but it is certainly noticed by the capitalists, who demand every hour of labor they can get. They demand not only an astonishingly high number of total working hours to keep their production running, but a massive reserve army of labor to undermine the negotiating position of existing workers. When they complain of a “tight labor market,” their grievance is not that there are no workers to be found, but rather that there are insufficient extra workers on the market to drive down wages. The capitalists need us to be desperate.
So with a shrinking population of adults willing and able to work, where do these predators turn their fangs? Our children. They have lobbied successfully for the loosening of child labor regulations -– easing restrictions on minimum age, hours worked, schooling requirements, sectors of employment, the need for parental permission, and even the mere enforcement of existing standards. These measures have been championed and signed into law by politicians across the bourgeois political spectrum. Across every capitalist state, every bourgeois party demands only one thing: the constant flow of profit, even at the expense of our youth.
The rising tide of efforts to expand the legal exploitation of children pales in comparison to the capitalists’ flagrant disregard for both law and decency, with violations of child labor law in the U.S. nearly quadrupling since 2015, and growing every year. Children as young as ten are working with dangerous machinery in car factories and handling caustic chemicals in meat-packing plants. This willingness to flout their own standards of morality while violating labor laws has always been exacerbated by periods of economic strain : the last huge spike in violations happened during the 2008 financial disaster. In every crisis, the most despicable vultures swoop in and pick clean every carcass they can find. There is ample profit to be made by siphoning the blood of the most despondent workers.
This combined assault on child labor protections — the degradation of regulations and the violations of existing ones — is so egregious that it cannot escape the notice of even pro-capitalist institutions. The Department of Labor has recently been investigating child labor violations by PSSI and Hyundai. The PSSI case in particular has generated so much public outcry because of its sheer brutality: children were expected to use caustic chemicals to clean industrial blades, leading directly to the injury of three minors. These injuries represent only a droplet in the rising tide of blood spilt by capitalists in their pursuit of profit. The investigations by federal agencies are themselves laughably pathetic; they carry no criminal charges, only fines. To the capitalist, this is only the cost of doing this depraved business. Still, the cost seems too much for them to bear, hence their push to scrap regulations altogether. Well-funded and highly-coordinated capitalist organizations, like Americans for Prosperity and the Chamber of Commerce have drafted and lobbied for bills toward this heinous end. So far, 10 U.S. states have proposed or enacted bills that expand working hours, lower working age requirements, lift restrictions on hazardous job duties, or even grant immunity to employers for workplace injuries or death. For children. The primary aim of this legislative blitz is to protect capitalists from legal action for the death and mutilation of children. The capitalists are enriched and empowered by their shamelessness, greed, and depravity. In their vampiric frenzy, not even children are spared the bloodlust.
The working class must act immediately to defeat this reanimated monstrosity. Child labor laws did not spring out of nowhere. They were the capitalists’ begrudging concession to a mobilized, militant labor movement. Our forebears told the bosses in no uncertain terms: release our children from this despicable practice, pay us enough to support our families, or you will not get our labor. United in solidarity, workers beat back the specter of child labor and other abuses, securing some level of dignity and power for our class. But their fight was incomplete. It was exclusionary, leaving gaps where the hyper-exploitation of racialized and colonized children could continue unabated. It was impermanent, leaving capitalists the profit stream to claw back all reforms. It was unambitious, unwilling to imagine and fight for a society built on true liberation. And now this old beast is now roaring back with a vengeance. This time, we must win not only the battle, but the war.
