Historical materialism and surplus value

The major critics of capitalism, at least, were appreciative of the fact that the early capitalists moved from the use of small hand tools to mechanised methods. Nowadays, however, and especially in the developing world, every employer of labour – whether the labourer be skilled or not – practises capitalist tendencies in the crudest form. Owners of factories and construction sites use their workers without any modicum of respect. The workers use diggers with bare hands where excavators should be used. They rarely wear safety boots and gloves. After work, they are hounded into very long, rickety vehicles with little or no ventilation, and are dropped off along the road with the vehicles never completely coming to a stop. To make matters worse, these workers lack any form of insurance cover. These shylock employers, relying on some repugnant casualisation laws, refuse to convert these workers to permanent staff. This criminal attitude goes on without end, and annoyingly, to the knowledge of our government.
The Workmen’s Compensation Decree 1987 provided for the following benefits for death or injury to a worker arising out of, and in the course of employment: 42 months’ salary for death; 54 months’ salary for permanent disablement, and 24 months’ salary for temporary total disablement (weekly wages) payable as follows: full salary for the first six months, 50 per cent of salary for the next three months, and 25 per cent of salary for the remaining 15 months. This law gave no limit for medical expenses for workers. There was a repeal of this law in 2010, with the coming into effect of the Employee Compensation Act 2010, with similar provisions. In all my years as an Insurance and Risk Management Professional, I can hardly count 10 cases reported against these employers from hell and decided against them with the penalties prescribed in the laws meted out to them.
In 2004, the administration of pension in Nigeria got a remarkable boost with the promulgation of the Pension Reform Act 2004. In 2014, the Act was amended. This law provides that every employer with a minimum of three staff shall provide a group life policy for them, and in the event of death, the deceased’s next-of-kin shall be paid three times of his annual salary. Still, no prosecution, no penalty for the numerous offenders.
The government, especially at the state level, is an accomplice in this chicanery. The governors, with a few exceptions, watch with glee as pensioners die on a daily basis while queuing to collect stipends which most times range between N3,000 and N5,000 monthly, or while undergoing dubious rounds of verification. In Imo State, civil servants and teachers are owed between four and seven months’ salaries, even on the new salary payment formula of 70 per cent. From the grapevine, this may soon go down to 50 per cent. And the governor is junketing around, shouting “my people, my people”. Abia will soon go out of public consciousness as a dead state. Anambra gives some hope, as it appears it has been blessed with bespoke leaders as governors, beginning with Chris Ngige, to Peter Obi, and now Willie Obiano.
In the financial services sector, especially in the banks and insurance institutions, many of the ladies are glorified harlots clothed in the garb of marketers. They must meet some senseless targets, anyhow. They are schooled to use what they have to get what they need. There are rampant cases of miscarriages caused by constant tension and pressure. Sunday evenings are the worst moments for these marketers as they look forward to tongue-lashing and threat of termination of employment on Monday mornings. Some of these fly-by-night capitalists slate management meetings for 6.30am on Mondays. All training sessions are booked for public holidays and weekends, to dehumanise the workers and reduce them to mere monkeys working for the baboons.
It has been argued that government is helpless because when these morally-bankrupt capitalists make all the money, they either go into politics personally or sponsor their surrogates…and the stealing continues. Plutocracy is gradually defining the political landscape in Nigeria, and so, the dream of inclusion is permanently swallowed by the reality of exclusion.
This brings us to the question of whether or not the government has the right to stop the banks from right-sizing. I get piqued when government over-reaches itself. Where was the government when only the banks consistently declared profits in our parlous economic environment? Were the banks not guilty of operating obnoxious policies including, but not limited to, ladies not getting pregnant in their first three years of employment? Does government have controlling shares in any commercial bank today? Has government not been laying off its own workers? Has government punished any bank for not supporting agriculture and the real sector? Is government just becoming aware that our banks have always enjoyed easy and free money which the Treasury Single Account (TSA) regime has now punctured? It is regrettable that when government is confronted with issues as these, its reaction is usually perfunctory and response at best anecdotal.
In finding succour for the worker, it is imperative as written in the first part of this serial to appreciate Karl Marx’s commitment to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism which is, in fact, his recognition that the conflict of interest between labour and capital cannot be removed by consensus, but must be overcome by overcoming the material conditions that give rise to the class conflict in the first instance. According to him, as capitalism involves the greatest extent of exploitation through the wage labour system, the overcoming of capitalism does not merely usher in a new mode of production with different exploitative relations of production as happened with the move from feudalism to capitalism. Instead, the overthrow of capitalism is important because it involves the overthrow of exploitation itself, and it is only once this has been achieved that mankind can begin to experience real freedom.