PEOPLE´S HISTORY

"History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from  those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the  French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory  workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and  children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation a world not restored but disintegrated.

My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept  the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been, The  history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of  interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered,  masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And  in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking  people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Howard Zinn. 

They Call it “Child Labour” but it is Child Slavery

 

The Bolivian President Evo Morales, supposed champion of “21st Century Socialism”, has declared himself partly supportive of “child labour”. This debate is not new. Associations of “child labourers” demand “fair” conditions for jobs that have “always existed” and that are considered necessary to help to end the poverty of their families.

By saying that work helps to form a “social conscience”, the President defends a current that, instead of favouring the abolition and total eradication of child labour, proposes its regulation.

Confusion is born from the very moment in which we accept the term “child labour” instead of calling it what it actually is – exploitation and child slavery. And, in Bolivia, there are over 850,000 children between the ages of 5 and 14 who are exploited in this way. A large part of the blame for this confusion lies with international organisations, like the ILO, which itself doesn’t stop talking about “child labour” and the “worst forms of child labour”. It is part of the bureaucratic and materialist vision that oozes from each speech given by organisations that have always served to defend the ruthlessness and criminality of capitalist imperialism that is always behind their decisions. Morales’ comments about “child labour” represent this contradiction.

Work in itself is not reprehensible. We have always believed that children should “work” on what they ought to: playing and developing themselves. But each child forced to work to satisfy their most basic needs, and those of their families, is condemned to forced labour. And this is often the result of the lack of job opportunities for their parents, or the lack of a dignified wage in the jobs they have that would allow them to escape poverty. Over sixty percent of the world’s adult workers live in such a situation, and in Bolivia it represents seventy percent of adult workers. And while this situation persists, so will the exploitation of children in the labour market – perpetuating in this way the disgusting and criminal economic system of capitalism.

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