Jack’s Reviews > Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism's Final Crisis > Status Update

"A striking feature of contemporary globalization is that a very large and growing proportion of the workforce in many global value chains is now located in developing economies. In a phrase, the centre of gravity of much of the world’s industrial production has shifted from the north to the South of the global economy." More shifting of labor

The purpose of corporate offshoring, whether at arm’s length or through foreign subsidiaries, is precisely to allow the corporation to focus on its “core competence,” while leaving other aspects of the process, often including production, to others. Many “manufacturing” firms now do not manufacture anything at all. They provide product and brand design, marketing, supply chain logistics, etc.

Outsourcing enables capitalists to replace higher-paid domestic labor with low-wage [global] Southern labor, exposing workers in imperialist nations to direct competition with similarly skilled but much lower paid workers in [these] nations, while falling prices of clothing, food, and other articles of mass consumption protects consumption levels from falling wages and magnifies the effect of wage increases.

“The involvement of developing countries is usually limited
to the labor-intensive stages in the production process.”

"In order to oppose their workers, the employers either bring in workers from abroad or else transfer manufacture to countries where there is a cheap labor force. Given this state of affairs, if the working class wishes to continue its struggle with some chance of success, the national organizations must become international. Let every worker give serious consideration to this new aspect of the problem" Karl Marx

Starting Chapter 2 soon. Have to switch gears for class stuff

"It forgets that TNCs and their suppliers hire “young unmarried
girls” in order to profit from their oppression, not to liberate them
from it;" Girlboss neoliberalism is a plague

It is worth pausing at this point to see how the ideologues
of neoliberalism justify the brutal labor regimes fostered by the policies they have designed and promoted.

"In contrast to the humble T-shirt, iPhones and laptops are technologically complex commodities. Their dazzling sophistication and iconic brand status can too easily blind the observer to the exploitative and imperialist character of the social and economic relations they embody." John Smith got jokes I see.