Sunday, October 28, 2007
Will Child Labour End Child Labour?
Anything that dents the massive self-righteous smugness of that odious store chain Gap is to be welcomed (and this is not the first time such discoveries have been made). However, I feel obliged to ask, What is so wrong about child labour? Harsh, yes, and undesirable, but it's an inevitable feature of all societies which haven't achieved the undreamt-of wealth that comes with widespread industrialisation - and, like it or not, it can be one of the routes out of poverty. Aren't these child workers helping to lift their families above the level of dire poverty at which they live and towards the small surplus that will enable them to get on? By this argument child labour is itself ending child labour, and our 'enlightened' intervention is - as in so many areas - serving to keep the really poor really poor, while making us, the really rich, feel good.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Alas, Nige, self-righteous smugness has become part of high street. Fair-trade this and ecological that... Some days I just wish I could go into town and buy myself a baboon.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent pet and companion David, and extremely useful around the house. On the South African railways some while back there was a singal box manned by a baboon, with little human intervention.
ReplyDeleteSignal box, that is - and here's the story.
ReplyDeleteNow here is a true thought experiment: man Britain's railways with baboons. I predict an improved service and a wider availability of fresh fruit on all platforms.
ReplyDeleteDavid B., I like your mind!
ReplyDeleteTo my shame, i confess many of my clothes come from Gap. i steal them, of course, but still.
ReplyDeleteI think you're making the mistake of embedding the notion of progress into the situation, Nige. In effect, such societies are working under systems of slave labour. The slaves, be they children or adults, are not progressing out of the system of exploitation in which they find themselves. The slave-owners, or various runners of the system, want the slavery to be maintained. The children may have the option of work or die, but you can say the same about any system of slavery. The dire poverty is because of such systems of exploitation, not ended by them. Child labour generally isn't ending child labour; child labour is child labour. The enlsavement of children in the factories in the English Industrial Revolution was only ended because of the efforts of those impelled by moral conscience to fight such inhumanity; not as a result of the wasted lives within such systems of exploitation.
ReplyDeleteI could make a very worthy comment here and say something very succinct and intelligent about something I haven't the foggiest idea about. But instead, I'd like to just express my continued disgust that this thread, and indeed this blog, continues to have a distinct lack of baboons and baboon related material.
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ReplyDeleteThe reason you haven't the foggiest idea about child labour and wish to deflect the matter into an infantile direction is because you consciously choose a worldview of ignorance, and you defend perceived threats to this worldview with the worthy, smugness card. The time-honoured ploy of imagining vice to be a virtue.
ReplyDeleteThanks Andrew. I appreciate such honesty.
ReplyDeleteHelp me helping - my friend Ace Kvale wants to document child labour in 3rd World Countries - sign in, vote and help to make the world a better place!!! http://www.nameyourdreamassignment.com/the-ideas/acekvale/shattered-dreams-the-world-of-child-labor/
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