Only a Start

Yesterday two workers from a sweatshop in the Dominican Republic that makes hats which bear the Harvard name stood in front of the John Harvard status and described the abysmal conditions of their workplace. The workers in this factory are paid 8 cents for every $20 hat, forced to work overtime, harassed, mistreated, and rendered unable to further their education or unionize, according to event organizers. The administration is said to be looking into the matter, and Students for a Sweat-free Campus are doing their best to make sure that the University adopts an effective code of conduct that will make it impossible to affix the Harvard name to sweatshop products.

We are inspired by the number of students who attended the rally yesterday and heartened by the nearly 2,000 students who signed a petition in support of a code of conduct which contains provisions for a living wage, freedom of association, independent monitoring, and a ban on harassment. It is hard to see why the administration would object to any of these provisions and we urge the University to adopt an effective code before the end of the school year.

While we are happy to see students taking aim at BJ & B's factory in the Dominican Republic, this particular shop is only one of many. Men, women, and children re being beaten, harassed and essentially enslaved so that Americans can have cheap apparel; as consumers we must work to limit suffering by consuming responsibly and insisting that the institutions into which we pour our money act responsibly. Sweatshops are bad and we should do our best to punish those who strive to profit from the suffering of others. But rather than striving to stomp out each individual sweatshop, we wonder if we shouldn't search for the root of the problem. In all the sweat-free flurry, it seem that we have forgotten to ask why sweatshops exist at all.

We have too readily accepted the notion that employers will strive to exploit their workers and that only a skein of laws, regulations and codes can prevent enormous suffering. Exploitation, abuse and greed are not inherent elements of the production process. We have sat through Marty Feldstein's mind-numbing lectures and we have read the praise of economic efficiency that so often appears on these editorial pages. But we re unwilling to think only within the bounds of what we have been taught to believe is the "natural" way of the economy.

In our society, we deify self-interest, profit and efficiency and then act shocked when we hear that factories abuse their workers in the name of these pursuits. Greed, single-minded pursuit of profit and inhumanity enable our economy. We do our best to limit the havoc that the dictates of the profit margin so often wreaks on humanity and the environment, but in the flurry of reigning in the forces which drive our economy we forget to wonder if there isn't a better way.

Sweatshops are the fallen angels of capitalism--the pursuit of profit and efficiency gone astray--but they are the product of capitalism nonetheless, and as such they should shake people's unflagging faith in our economic system. The two of us struggle to fathom placing such blind faith in a system which produces enormous income disparities, divides American social and economic life along racial lines and puts a Starbucks on every affluent corner.

The Ec10 mentality teaches us that there are winners (like Bill Gates) and losers (like inner city America) in our system, and that this is not only "fine," but the way it should be. And campus publications act as an endless reserve of proof that many of our fellow classmates seem to believe wholeheartedly in the sanctity of the market.

In response to community attempts to prevent the Holmes development in Central Square, Cabot Henderson wrote the following in a March 16 salient article: "The new complex is being built because there is a demand for quality housing and Khaki pants which is not currently being met in Central Square. Meddling with these irrepressible forces results in distortion." This type of simplistic faith in the Truth of the market, and espousal of the value of submitting to the machinations of the market, disturbs us almost as much as sweatshop horror stories.

We refuse to believe that we are all inherently self-interested pawns in a vast teleological game played by invisible hands. The myth that the laws of the free market will inexorably lead us to the light at the end of some economic and social tunnel is just that--a myth, and a dangerous one at that. We refuse to believe that we must live amidst exploitation, inhumanity, greed, and massive inequality, and call this "irrepressible." We refuse to believe that stopping a sweatshop here and there is the best we can do.

Why don't sweatshops shake our faith in our economic systems?

Abigail R. Branch '98, a social studies concentrator, and Andrea E. Johnson '98-'99, an environmental science and public policy concentrator, live in Quincy House. Their column appears on alternate Wednesdays.