Child Labor Defended by the Left
by Peter Dorman (from Econospeak)
Child Labor Defended by the Left
Well, some of the left, but they probably represent the main currents of progressive thought among intellectuals. Those who not part of the charmed circle of researchers, activists and policy-makers in the realm of child labor may not know that a storm has been whipped up over regulation of children’s work. A number of academics and heads of NGOs have stepped forward to say that lots of child labor is OK, and the blanket condemnation of it is oppressive. They want to scrap international agreements that set restrictions on the employment of children, and they support efforts at the national level to repeal child labor regulations.
The flashpoint is Bolivia, where the laws were rewritten to allow children as young as 10 to work alongside their parents and to enter formal employment at 12. “To eliminate work for boys and girls would be like eliminating people’s social conscience,” says Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales. This was the culmination of a campaign led by UNATsBO, an organization representing Bolivian working children, led by children with advice from adults. One of their adult advisors is Manfred Liebel, a German political scientist. His writings combine familiar radical tropes with passionate belief in the virtue of child labor.
Here are a couple of representative snippets from one of his articles dating from 2003, the year that UNATSBO was founded:
[Working children’s organizations are] questioning traditional age hierarchies and establishing new, more egalitarian relationships between the generations. But they also personify a massive criticism of different aspects of the western bourgeois way of thinking and behaviour and pave the way for an understanding of the subject until now unknown or unaccepted in the western world.
In accordance with other social movements of repressed and excluded population groups in the South, the working children’s organizations reclaim and practise a subject-understanding and a subject-existence based on human dignity and the respect for human life. (p. 273)
The subject-understanding and the subject-praxis of the working children’s organizations also go beyond the modern western understanding ofchildhood. According to this understanding, the children are indeed granted a certain autonomy and given protection from risks, but these concessions happen at the cost of an active and responsible role for the children in society. The children are practically excluded from adult life and assigned to special reservations in which they are ‘raised’, ‘educated’ and prepared for the future. Their possible influence on this future is confined to the individual ‘qualification’ of each person, yet not to decisions about the arrangement of social relationships. These remain reserved for the adults or the power elite. (p. 274)
Well, you get the idea. The attempt to eliminate child labor denies the essential humanity of children. It wants to impose a capitalist conception of their role in society which prioritizes their future productivity at the expense of what they can do in the present. It is hierarchical and expresses a colonial, eurocentric mindset.
Liebel is one of a number of child labor researchers who have banded together under the banner of “child labor protagonism”. They’ve made it their mission to dismantle regulations that interfere with the choice many children want to make, to earn some money by working. In January of this year 59 of them sent an open letter to the UN commission that administers the Convention on the Rights of the Child, urging them to disconnect the CRC from other international agreements that set minimum ages for certain types of work. This provoked a response from Human Rights Watch and arebuttal from the Group of 59.
You can read the documents and decide for yourself. I have rather strong feelings about this topic, having spent years myself studying child labor. I recognize that it raises many difficult questions, and reasonable people can disagree. I believe, however, that most of the arguments of the protagonistas are straw men (straw kids?), although the HRW statement is rather weak as well—legally defensive rather than substantively engaged.
To really dig into the issues would take more time and space than my life or EconoSpeak permits. Here are a few bald statements, however:
Whether children want to work or not is not a decisive issue for policy on child labor. Sorry. Minimum wage laws prevent people from accepting jobs that pay less than the minimum, and occupational safety laws often interfere with the freedom of workers to take jobs that regulators have decided are dangerous. Food safety laws tell you what substances you’re not allowed to eat in your food, even if you want to. Regulations interfere with free individual choice, for adults as well as children. That doesn’t mean that all regulations are good or that we should ignore what people whose freedom will be impinged have to say about them, but the “statism” of regulation is not a general argument for deregulation either.
Yes, child labor has played a central role in every traditional culture. Of course. Until very recently average lifespans were short. If the average lifespan of those who make it out of infancy is, say, 40, it makes no sense to delay work until the age of 15. And with much lower productivity, every pair of hands was needed. But the new reality is that people can expect to live a lot longer, even in the poorest parts of the world, and childhood as a time of investment and development is inescapable. I’m not for cultural imperialism, but I’m not for consigning whole generations of kids growing up in traditional cultures to lifelong poverty.
Which leads to the main point. Of course, no general rule regarding child labor fits the situation of every child. No matter what limits you impose—whether you make 14 or 12 or 3 the age of consent for employment—some children will be harmed. Every regulation does this. But not regulating can also cause harm, and the sensible thing to do is strike a balance, to minimize the sum of harms. Take the case of domestic child labor, a flashpoint of the current debate. An International Labor Organization Convention categorizes this as a “worst form of child labor”, and indeed there are horror stories galore of young children, especially girls, exploited economically, socially and sexually as underage servants. But many children work at domestic service without any serious harm, some of them even bonding with the families they live with. So what’s the call? The ideal would be to have an army of investigators checking into each domestic situation, separating the noble from the evil, but that’s not going to happen. (First reports out of Bolivia say that the government there doesn’t have the resources to monitor newly legalized child labor for the treatment of children. Surprise.) So in the end some sort of regulation is necessary, with the expectation that those enforcing it will act flexibly in situations where the regulation is clearly inappropriate.
Finally, I think the eminent researchers are wrong about two important points. First, quite generally, substantial time devoted to child labor tends to have harmful effects on education, especially as measured by cognitive test scores and grade advancement; you can read about it here. Second, as the only researcher who has studied the question in a disciplined way, I can say that greater exploitation of children compared to adults, while by no means universal, is characteristic of many work situations. These potential negative spillovers to adult labor markets were the reason why labor movements were in the forefront of opposition to child labor. We now have at least some evidence that their fears were not imaginary.
I should stop: this has already gone on too long. But I don’t want to check out before saying that I agree with one of the main arguments of the Grupo 59: simple prohibition is generally not a good way to combat child labor. Much better is the strategy of providing income support for poor families, and, although the evidence is less clear, I suspect that substantially improving schools in the poorest regions will increase the time and commitment that children devote to them. The way forward is through support and opportunity, not prohibition and punishment. But the child labor crusaders at the UN say this too.
UPDATE: Hoisted from my own comment: “After sleeping on this, I now think I should have emphasized the fundamental point, that massive poverty and underinvestment in children is the core problem, which shows up in a variety of symptoms. You can certainly debate how much emphasis should be given to regulations versus transfer programs versus school enhancement. The problem I have with protagonistas like Liebel is that they seem to deny there is a problem in the first place, or they define it down to just specific instances of exploitive work.”
Ok I’ll bite. If massive poverty and underinvestment is the core problem (we agree on this) what version of the “left” is saying the solution (at least in part) is greater child labor?
The argument smells a lot more neolib than leftist but I guess “reasonable people can disagree”. It also reeks of libertarian arglebargle which I suspect is closer to the core ideology. Has failed libertarian politics in the west sent these roaches scurrying to the third world?
I had exactly the same reaction as you did, Amateur Socialist. What definition of “progressive” includes this stuff?
Maybe the term “progressive” should be trademarked so that only progressives can call themselves that. My first thought was, this is really bizarre. Then I realized, no, this is really fraud.
Friend, your ideological slip is showing.
First, it’s the blazing headline “Child Labor Defended by the Left.”
Then it’s “well, some of the left…”
Next it’s “probably represent the main currents of progressive thought among intellectuals.”
And as proof you cite the views of just one of those intellectuals.
And all without mentioning that it’s the international capitalist order that creates the extremes of poverty where child labor becomes a necessity for people merely to survive. The “Left” would be very happy to see such conditions abolished forever.
Synchronicity – The June issue of Harper’s I was reading last night featured a new “Letter from India” about children being kidnapped for forced labor. http://harpers.org/archive/2016/06/the-long-rescue/ (sorry paywalled for subscribers only)
But these two paragraphs seemed particularly relevant:
—
“When Kunwar asked the parents why they’d sent away their sons and daughters, they pleaded poverty. The traffickers offered money, they said, and promised to feed and clothe the children. Kunwar also asked the hotel owners about their rationale. One said that children work harder for less money and don’t steal. Whatever you give them to eat, they eat quietly and go to sleep. Children, in other words, are the cheapest and most easily manipulated form of labor. Even the poorest adults are more likely to stand up to exploitation. But a child, the hotelier explained, makes no demands.
If people were forced to hire adults exclusively, however, families would be less poor — and children, as a consequence, less likely to be pressured to work. “Children are poor because their parents don’t have jobs,” Ribhu said. “But their parents don’t have jobs because the jobs are going to children.”
—
The solution to child labor is better pay and working conditions for adults. Full stop.
If one is ever capable of reading between the lines, I would say that Obama is trying to accommodate the ever present child labor that is widely used in countries like Vietnam. As for doing this in America? There is really no labor demand other than to re enserf and would be looked at as exploitation for greed. If Groupo 59 attempts to bring “it” to America again they will hopefully get strong resistance….My grampa was a coal coupler as a kid in Penn.after his father was killed in a mining accident.. There were no unions, soc.sec., watch dog agencies, internet, tv, credit cards or basic human rights. They lived in company housing and were paid with company script. He lived in Ellsworth, Pa.. For much greater insight on the re ensefment of the American people Please go see todays article at PaulCraigRobert.org… With an election system so rigged there is little hope of addressing the rampant corporate greed that is taking over the entire world. The United States Corporation is involved in covert organized crime to where if Killery gets in the police state and never ending wars will continue…
Well, President Evo Morales of Bolivia is quoted as defending child labor, declaring that “eliminating work for boys and girls would be eliminationg people’s social conscience.” Last I checked, Morales was viewed as being “of the Left,” and this is a pretty unequivocal statement by him.
So, Amateur Socialist and the rest of you, there is more to this than one lone intellectual.
Barkley Rosser,
Evo Morales is definitely of the Left. Among many other fights: “Morales increased taxation on the hydrocarbons industry to bolster social spending, emphasizing projects to combat illiteracy, poverty, racism, and sexism. Vocally criticizing neoliberalism and reducing dependence on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, his administration oversaw strong economic growth while following a policy termed “Evonomics” which sought to move from a liberal economic approach to a mixed economy. Scaling back U.S. influence in the country, he built relationships with leftist governments in the Latin American… His administration has focused on the implementation of leftist policies, poverty reduction, and combating the influence of the United States and multinational corporations in Bolivia.” (And by the way, he passed “The Law of Mother Earth,” granting all nature equal rights to humans, which redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as “blessings” and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.”)
These are some of the reasons why neo-liberals, like HRH HRC and the author of the piece, attack him, and why, given the opportunity, she would surely help to remove him from office, exactly as she did with the democratically-elected president of Honduras.
Morales also an Aymara Indian and a farmer who was born into a poor family of subsistence farmers; he worked the farm, tended the animals. In fact, he rose to prominence in the rural laborers union. It must be granted that when he says “eliminating work for boys and girls would be eliminating people’s social conscience,” he understands that child labor is an absolute necessity in Bolivia and in other poor countries — a statement he made by the way IN SUPPORT of unionized young workers who marched on Congress to prevent it from ratifying a bottom-end work age of 14. But what does he mean when he is thinking of child labor?
Bolivia changed the law regarding child labor. “While most of the world is trying to diminish child labor, Bolivia has become the first nation to legalize it for children as young as 10 years old… The bill’s sponsors say lowering the minimum work age from 14 simply acknowledges a reality: Many poor families in Bolivia have no other choice than for their kids to work. However, the bill, they say, does offer working children safeguards… “Child labor already exists in Bolivia, and it’s difficult to fight it. Rather than persecute it, we want to protect the rights and guarantee the labor security of children,” said Sen. Adolfo Mendoza, one of the bill’s sponsors. Under the legislation, 10-year-olds will be able to work as long as they are under parental supervision and also attend school. It sets 12 as the minimum age for a child to work under contract. Those children would also have to attend school.
“[Morales] gave us his support. He also worked as a boy, herding llamas,” Rodrigo Medrano, head of the Union of Boy, Girl and Adolescent Workers (Unatsbo), told The Associated Press. He said there is no alternative in a society where half the population is poor.
Many international campaigners advocate an end to all child labor, but Unatsbo follows a more pragmatic line, arguing that, in a region where child labor is rife, it is more important to ensure young workers are not exploited.
Rodrigo Medrano is 14, head of the union, whose successes include organizing pay raises for children who sell newspapers on the city streets, using negotiations and the threat of strikes.
“Rodrigo believes that instead of attempting to end many forms of child and adolescent work, the goal should be ending exploitation by creating part-time, safe and better paying jobs for young people who want them. “Why should there be a minimum age if the work is voluntary?” he asked. “The work of a child or adolescent is not bad – it helps society, it helps a family, and it helps us grow as people”.”
The failure to understand that context is what Manfred Liebel means when he talks about the different aspects of the western bourgeois way of thinking and behavior as applied to places like Bolivia. The bourgeois says “child labor is bad.” The Bolivian child laborer and head of a union says “there is no choice, but protect us from exploitation and give us an education.”
And all of this without critiquing the real source of worldwide poverty of the kind necessitating child labor: a neo-liberal capitalist order of exploitation. Bolivian child laborers are exploited by Bolivian businessmen. Bolivia is exploited by international businessmen.