Dialectical Anthropology

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-018-9526-5

Toward a global anthropology of labor: a response to Bryan

D. Palmer’s

August Carbonella 1

# Springer Nature B.V. 2018

Bryan Palmer has written a much welcome call for the renewal of working class studies in
History and Anthropology. His focus, as his subtitle indicates, is on the Canadian working
class and its achievements and failures. His consideration of class as “defined by the diverse
experiences of dispossession fundamental to capitalism’s origins and ongoing social relations,”
however, opens a window to a broader comparative perspective. His expanded definition of
class invites consideration of the multiplicity and unevenness of class and labor relations not
only in Canada, on which he focuses, but globally and the possibilities and limitations it poses
for our understanding of labor and class more generally (see Carbonella and Kasmir 2014).
Toward this end, I start with a consideration of the world-historical anthropologies of Eric
Wolf (1982), Cedric Robinson (1983), and Sidney Mintz (1985), who were writing at precisely
the moment when the unmaking of national working classes and the globalization of labor
processes was intensifying. Collectively, they situated the differentiated 19th century processes
of labor formation within transnational and global orbits, and tied them to the production of
distinct racial, ethnic, and gender hierarchies. Their collective emphasis on global labor, rather
than class formation, allows us to consider not only the multiplicity of laboring populations,
but the possibilities and limitations they hold for solidarity across categories, regions, and
borders. As Sharryn Kasmir and I defined it, “labor is a pointedly political entity, whose social
protests, and quietude, organizations, and cultures reflect its multiple engagements with capital
and state, as well as relationships with other workers locally, regionally, and globally.” Our
definition was meant to encompass not only the myriad forms of extant labor within temporal
and spatial processes of capital accumulation, but the power laden processes of categorizing,
differentiating, or unifying those laborers (ibid, 7). In doing so, we relied heavily on W.E.B.
Du Bois’ argument in Darkwater (1969 [1920]) the lived experience of dispossession and the
production of difference and inequality are conjoined, simultaneous processes” (ibid).

* August Carbonella
augustc@mun.ca

1
Department: Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL A1C 5S7, Canada
 A. Carbonella

I draw upon Du Bois here to suggest that working class formation is a wholly uneven
process, resulting in attempts at solidarity, certainly, but also in the formation of racial, ethnic,
and gender hierarchies” (ibid, 7). Palmer clearly acknowledges the unevenness and differen-
tiation that emerge from these recurrent processes of dispossession, and rightly points out that
they cannot be used as a denial of class. Yet, he seems to downplay the broader political
possibilities that often emerge from these conjoined processes of differentiation and dispos-
session. This is seen most clearly in his approving use of Mike Davis’ definition of “the
proletariat’s job description”: Revolutions of the poor in backward countries can reach for the
stars, but only the proletariat in advanced countries can actually grasp the future” (p. 8).
Looked at historically, this assertion may be seen to be far from accurate, not only in
Canada, where the fortunes of labor are certainly unevenly distributed and allocated, but more
generally. Here is the point to bring in Mintz, Robinson, and Wolf. (ibid). The common thread
linking Sweetness and Power, Black Marxism, and Europe and the People without History
respectively is the theoretical conclusion that spatially distinct and differently classified
laborers were the conjoined products of globally uneven processes of proletarianization,
leading to the expansion of waged, indentured, and peasant labor. As Mintz, echoing
W.E.B. Du Bois (1935), famously demonstrated, surplus value was produced as much by
slave and colonial labors as by the factory proletariat. Moveover, all three scholars situated the
differentiated 19th century processes of labor formation within transnational and global orbits,
tying them to the production of distinct racial, ethnic, and gender hierarchies (Carbonella:
forthcoming). Robinson’s well-known rejoinder to E.P. Thompson—that the making of the
English working class could not be separated as a distinct phenomenon from the inequalities
produced and operating within the interconnected spaces of the British Empire—may be
applied equally to Davis’ notion that only the proletariat in advanced countries can actually
grasp the future. Taking this approach, to bring the focus into the more recent past, would be to
ignore the anti-colonial struggles and peasant revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s, and the
influence they had on Black liberation struggles in the USA and Britain in the 1960s and
1970s. It is also to neglect the transformative impact that radicalized Viet Nam era veterans,
Black, Latino, and White, had on labor politics in the USA more generally in the 1970s, when
they applied the lessons of resistance learned from Viet Nam peasants to “bring the war home.”
Much of the above draws on Robinson’s (ibid) displacement of exploitation in production
as the most important catalyst of visions of social justice and rebellion. “It is not the
organization of production”, he later argued, “but the organization of oppression that formed
the primary social basis for revolutionary activity among diverse, differently classified
laborers” Robinson (1997, p. 134). While revolutionary activity may not be on the horizon
in Canada anytime soon, thinking about the production of racial difference among permanent
workers and temporary workers in these terms may help us expand our conception of labor
politics in Canada. Here I am thinking of the onerous restrictions placed on the temporary
manual and service workers in Canada: the Mexican laborers who toil under extremely
oppressive conditions in the tomato fields of Ontario, who have to return home at the end of
the harvest season; or the Pilipino or Guatemalan laborers hired as domestics or clerks in fast-
food franchises who are forced to leave after residing in the country for four years. And I am
only scratching the surface here of the increasing differentiation of labor across Canada. While
I do not expect we’ll see mass mobilizations for immigrant rights in Canada anytime soon, we
can at least begin to think about these temporary workers in broader relational terms, and
imagine a politics of labor that includes the temporary laborers from impoverished and
developing countries as well as the industrialized and unionized Canadian laborers.
Toward a global anthropology of labor: a response to Bryan D. Palmer’s

References

Bois, Du. (2007 [1935]. Black reconstruction in American: an essay toward a history of the part which Black folk
played in the attempt to reconstruct democracy in America. Oxford University Press.
Bois, Du. 1969. Darkwater: Voices from within the veil. New York: Schocken Books.
Carbonella, August & Sharryn Kasmir, 2014, Introduction: toward a global anthropology of labor. In Ibid. Blood
and fire: toward a global anthropology of labor. Berghahn Books.
Mintz, Sidney. 1985. Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history. Penguin Books.
Robinson, Cedric. 2000 (1983). Black Marxism: the making of the Black radical tradition. University of North
Carolina Press.
Robinson, Cedric. 1997. Black movements in America. Routledge Press
Wolf, Eric R. 1997 (1982). Europe and the people without history. University of California Press.