For a look into the pressure put on labor by capital(ists), please read today’s
article on part-time work in the NYT. It looks to me like war. The automation of production and services, the universal use of telecom (internet and cellphones), and the globalization of the world market since the nineties, together with the slowdown in industrialized countries like the US, mean the millions looking for jobs can be put under more pressure than ever, given low salaries and little or no benefits.

See how the enemy presents it: page 51 of McKinsey’s US job creation full report, and their cooked up explanations:

Partly because of concern over the strength of the economic recovery and over potential regulatory and tax changes, many executives we interviewed and surveyed are cautious about hiring full-time employees in the United States. As a consequence, in 2010 almost 25 percent of the 1 million nonfarm jobs that were created were part time, and 27 percent were temporary. Part-time employment, as a share of total employment, is higher than at any time since 1980 (Exhibit 28).

In the NYT article, a consultant compares the situation of part-time workers to that of sharecroppers:

Mr. Flickinger, the retail consultant, said companies benefited from using many part-timers. “It’s almost like sharecropping — if you have a lot of farmers with small plots of land, they work very hard to produce in that limited amount of land,” he said. “Many part-time workers feel a real competition to work hard during their limited hours because they want to impress managers to give them more hours.

Indeed, “like sharecropping.” That is: 1) small amounts of land or labor calculated to provide a level below subsistence so as to extract the maximum labor. In the modern case in the form of energy fueled by the fear of losing one’s job and have to go back on the market. In the agrarian case in the form of extraction of labor of the whole family—wife and children—of the worker, plus demonstrations of one’s faithfulness to the lord or landowner. Of course, in the modern case, the family is also put under pressure, especially in immigrant populations. 2) indebtedness is built in. The sharecroppers’ landowners set acreage and rents so that sharecroppers were forced to deal with the company store and owner, got in debt, then were even more securely tied to the situation. In the modern form, the lessor (company owner, Jamba Juice or whatever) doesn’t seem to be the same as the creditor (Card companies and banks), but they are, via the banking behind the share/stock exchange system.

Where is all this going? The consumption capacity of the country is not going to be able to stay at 65% of the economy or whatever it is at now. Of course, there is much capital accumulated that can go to consumption still. For instance parents, if they can, help their children who are working at these temp jobs and perhaps studying, if school tuition hasn’t jumped too high. Some of the cash these families were able to save in more stable jobs is being used this way by the economy. Fifteen or twenty years from now, in their last years, when having to use long-term care facilities, whatever is left of their cash or property will vanish into the system. Then what?