Bangladesh: the people who sew our clothes say they are going hungry

According to Al Jazeera, tens of thousands of textile workers have taken to the streets in Bangladesh, the world's second-largest clothing exporter, to demand a higher minimum wage. The outlet's headline quotes their words: "Going hungry", meaning "we are going hungry". They say their wages barely cover their needs.

The dispatch we have is thin. We do not know the current minimum wage, the amount being demanded, the response from the government or employers, or the toll of the protests, if any. We will not invent them. What remains is the structural question, which does not depend on any of the missing figures.

What follows is our reading, not an established fact. A country that clothes the planet, whose workers struggle to eat: the paradox is only a paradox if one believes Bangladesh is simply "behind" the rich countries. Yet its economy was shaped to supply the centre with what it demands: cheap labour, delivered in great quantity. Brands buy where labour costs are lowest, and play countries off against one another. Every wage rise then becomes a threat of relocation. This is the logic of unequal exchange: value produced in Dhaka is realised elsewhere, in shop windows and in the margins of those who place the orders.

The mechanics of exploitation here do not require cruel bosses. A wage corresponds, roughly, to what is needed for the worker to return to work the next day. All working time beyond that sum produces value that does not return to the worker: this is the source of profit. When the wage no longer covers food, the formula reaches its raw limit: the very reproduction of the labour force is called into question.

No doubt the usual argument will be heard: raising wages would drive orders away, and so harm the workers themselves. This is a structural blackmail, not a law of nature. It does not explain why the buyers, who set the purchase prices, should be the only ones owing nothing to those who sew. Those who profit from the division between producing countries have every interest in seeing it last.

There is also the question posed by Cabral and Fanon: independence without social transformation leaves the apparatus in place, and a local elite manages the place assigned to it by the centre. We do not yet know how the Bangladeshi state will position itself. But one can already look at who sits at the negotiating tables, and who does not.

The workers, for their part, have chosen the street over silence. The coming weeks will tell whether their voice will weigh more than the orders of the next season.