Received: 23 July 2020 Accepted: 30 July 2020

DOI: 10.1111/lands.12494

BOOK REVIEW

Value chains: The new economic

Intan Suwandi

New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019, 215 pp, ISBN 978-1-58367-781-0. Hardcover US$89; softcover US$23.

Intan Suwandi's book intervenes the ongoing debate on imperialism among leftist scholars such as , Utsa Patnaik, and Prabha Patnaik. Throughout this book, Suwandi argues that imperialism still exists, operating via new mechanisms in the contemporary world econ- omy. She points out that today's imperialism exists in Global Commodity Chains (GCC) and Global Value Chain (GVC). Led by multinational corporations, she argues, the GCC and GVC do not necessarily represent distributed power within the capitalist class. Using Lenin's theory of imperialism as a primary analytical framework, Suwandi highlights the concept of global exploitation to support her thesis. In five chapters, Suwandi shows the contemporary form of imperialism by analyzing gaps in Global North and Global South countries participating in the GCC and GVC schemes. In chapter 1, Suwandi demonstrates that imperialist relations between Northern and Southern countries still prevail even though the locus of production has moved to the Global South. In chapter 2, she explains the process of surplus extraction from the Global South from a Marxist perspective by focusing on labor-value commodity chains or labor-value chains. Utilizing the concept, Suwandi contends that capital-labor relations are the center of the exploitative rela- tionship in the capitalist mode of production. According to Suwandi, GCC and GVC have disadvantaged workers in the Global South due to two main factors. First, multinational companies—most of their headquarter offices located in the Global North—still retain much control of advanced technologies. Second, the high wage gaps in Global North and Global South within the GVC and GCC, which have nothing to do with workers' productivity. Suwandi's field research at two Indonesian-based companies involved in the GVC supports both explanations. To understand how today's imperialism works, Suwandi employs the concept of global labor arbitrage, that is, “overexploitation of labour in the Global South by International Capital,” to see the difference in prices for labor in the Global North and Global South (p. 54). Through global labor arbitrage, Suwandi investigates how values, extracted from cheap wage labor in rural areas, are generated globally. In this case, factory relocations to the cheapest possible loca- tion, particularly in the Global South countries, has thus characterized the global labor arbitrage. Multinational companies sought to relocate factories to low wages area in Global South countries such as Indonesia or Vietnam. Large number of the reserve army of labor appears to be a significant motive of these relocations. Capitalist logic, writes Suwandi, “creates the

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Labor and Society. 2020;23:581–583. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/lands 581 582 BOOK REVIEW necessity to cheapen labour whenever possible” to find low wages area (p. 82). As a result, all production locations moved to the Global South along with their pollution, while countries in the Global North are still the main export destinations. Nevertheless, these “” have not undermined workers organizing in the Global South (Pratap, 2014; Silver, 2008). Until now, Suwandi notes, the ratio of the number of workers in Global South and Global North is 541 million to 145 million (p. 23). Moreover, 79% of the world's industrial workers live in the Global South (p. 50). Nevertheless, wage gaps in the Global North and Global South are still high, and this has nothing to do with workers' productivity. In this case, Suwandi uses the concept of unit labor costs to analyze this matter since unit labor cost depends not only on labor productivity but also on wages, the price of labor-power. Her findings: countries with the highest participation rates in the labor value chain have meager unit labor cost. In this light, the operation of global labor arbitrage is revealed to be seen in “repressive work environment, eradicating unions and piece-wage systems” (p. 54). Increased , especially in the manufacturing sector, both through offshore (arm's length con- tracts/offshore outsourcing; also known as subcontracting/Nonequity Modes of production) as well as within a multinational company/intrafirm trade are the evidence. In chapters 3 and 4, Suwandi discusses the systemic rationalization (changes in technology and work organization) and flexible production through two case studies to examine how multi- national companies generate profits (p. 107). Suwandi argues that the flexible mode of produc- tion aims at increasing profits by moving production sites to dependent companies. Flexibility, she writes, “is one of the major characteristics in today's labour value chains” (p.111) and thus, “firms everywhere, big and small, search for greater flexibility” (p. 71). People work harder and become more productive to maintain their work status while job security is severely lacking under this flexible mode of production, from which profits go to corporates in the Global North. Equally important, labor flexibilization also intends to restructure work practices by control- ling the labor process. Suwandi highlights that multinational companies manage commodity chains and facilitate the extraction of surplus value in the Global South by imposing control of the labor process. She points out that the Tayloristic organization model of work still exists in peripheral production areas with a high rate of the reserve army of labor. In chapter 5, she casts light on work organization in the GVC as a significant mechanism so that the Global North can exploit labor in the Global South. The control over labor process— which involves work reorganization to control skills and knowledge is dominated and formed by —results in labor deskilling while transforming workers merely into the “executors of work” (p. 83). Workers do not produce goods as a whole. The production scheme perpetuates through the working system, which alienates workers from the fruits of their labor. One example of the schemes is the putting-out system in which workers even do not know about the end product they produce—not to mention the Human Resources (HR) mechanism in companies which subject workers to constant evaluation. In this light, reorganizing, revolutionizing the labor process is the key in today's capital accumulation. Hence, Suwandi argues that “the workplace is a perpetual battleground” (p. 86). Value Chains is a detailed exploration of the current form of global imperialism. Suwandi manages to show it through GCC and GVC, which impose significant gaps in labor costs and control over advanced technologies between the Global North and Global South. While Suwandi's fieldwork in two Indonesian companies supports the main theses of this book, her account overlooks specific features of the Global North capitalists, for instance, those located in East Asia and Europe. Suwandi does not examine whether they are focusing more on control- ling companies' advanced technologies or cheapening wages in their role at the GVC and GCC.