The edges of capitalism: where shipbreakers meet Gully-Gold miners on the remnants of capitalist mode of production and the vicious conditioning of alienated labour: with special reference to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Abstract

Introduction

The ultimate logic of market fundamentalism which advocates, market does allocate resources efficiently among competitive member of the society is simply nothing but ‘poor philosophy’ of ignorance and ambiguity (Marx 1953, Keynes 1962 and Chang 2010). Market is a power mechanism. It separates humans, ignores humanity, stripes empathy and teaches humans how to be extremely narcissistic. What you see as the edge of the capitalist society we are living in – or – what you see as the edges of the existing economic reality is not actually the ‘edge’ of it. What you see as the edge or the end of our political economy of life is absolutely nothing but a mental depiction of fundamentally fetish power arms of market mechanism. Purchasing power is not merely a monetary expression. It contains power – not only certain abilities to perform in the market but also a certain restrictions to perform as well. It is true that purchasing power indicates your identity in the market but at the same time it agitates yourself and reflects your true nature of isolation from other human beings in the society. As an internal organ of the development of capitalism, historically, this alienated nature of human beings flourished and survived the play as consuming and exploitation the very fact, alienated nature of humans under capitalism.1 Thus, this practice has been guiding us to demarcate our own ‘preferred-limits’ in the society – What is my range and what is not? – What do I care and what do I do not care?

This study attempts to look beyond the given edges or demarcations of contemporary capitalism with respect to key labour exploitative mechanisms in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The focus of this study is to critically examine the historical transformation of capitalist market fundamentalism in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, through a comparative aspect of analysis; with respect to labour exploitation and conditioning of alienated labour. The study put forward its hypothesis which as, the market fundamentalism (neoliberalism) historically left off– ignored – and inhumanly exploited – a group of people who belong to a certain class structure in the economy while it is heading towards the demarcated destination of capitalist development. The study argues that this ignorant is not something accidental or involuntary, as the theoreticians of market fundamentalism argues that this so called ‘externalities’ can be compensated through the internal mechanisms of market itself. The study tries to synthesise an argument that goes against this fundamentalism; which shows that, markets cannot do anything to take actions against this marginalization process and, more decisively, markets create the effect, markets sustain it and, more dangerously, as an internal mechanism markets need such a class structure to do certain activities and tasks in the process of fulfilling market’s ‘roundaboutness’.