Work is for the Workers

We all know that Apple produces its wondrous products in Chinese factories, where Chinese workers labor under such miserable conditions that nets had to be installed to catch jumpers eager for the sweet embrace of self-imposed death. Research, design, marketing, and other soft endeavors are run out of Cupertino, supplying great jobs to some of the luckiest people on Earth.

But the real work of building the products, of course, is left to Chinese workers, because they don't require pesky things like health insurance, a dignified living wage, and humane working conditions that greedy, spoiled American workers do.

So in the interest of maximizing profits, Apple refuses to allow its amazingly popular products, truly today's equivalent of Ford automobiles of a century earlier, to be made in America. No big deal--it's not like millions of Americans are desperate for work, or that entire, once great cities are rotting away, because nothing is manufactured there anymore. Again, this isn't news.

But here's something you might have missed. Apple compiled nearly $100 billion in cash reserves in the wake of the iPad, the most successful new consumer electronics launch in history. Would it be the worst thing in the world if they didn't have an extra $100 billion that they didn't know what to do with, and American workers could partake of the popularity and success of Apple products? Could entire cities be saved with even a sliver of that extra $100 billion? How many millions of American lives would be spared the desperation, hopelessness, and indignity of trying to scrape together a living by any rough means necessary?

Naturally, it is beyond absurd to expect a successful American company to not hoard massive profits at the direct expense of their fellow citizens. America is not a country, it's a business, and there are no citizens, just competitors.

The point of employment is not to produce great products, to serve customers as best as possible, or even to maximize profits. It is to provide good work for as many employees as possible, to raise the standard of socialization, humanistic intelligence, and dignity for the greatest number. Companies don't exist for customers or shareholders--they are for the workers. Of course, employers are so used to crushing down the spirit of workers, and only accepting them into their precious, vaunted orbits if there is absolutely no doubt that they will contribute to the bottom line. There is no turning back--work is no longer for the workers, and, soon enough, society will no longer be for humans. Capitalism can only culminate in the removal of the human fly in its ointment.

It is more important for $100 billion in pointless, surplus wealth to serve no purpose and be shielded off from the wider world, than to be potentially used to help millions of people survive. A nice companion piece to the Apple cash hoard while American workers languish and Chinese workers get worked to their marrow is this story about huge numbers of apartments in Midtown where apartments are empty for 10 months out of the year, functioning as glorified hotel rooms for the ultra rich when they want a break from their Tuscan villa or whatever it is rich people do. Of course, countless homeless people are literally sleeping, starving, and often dying in the streets below these vacant rooms every night. Neoliberal capital is about hoarding unneeded cash reserves in the billions through extreme cost-cutting measures, and it is about keeping apartments empty in case a millionaire wishes to use it a few weekends a year to store the merchandise they buy on their Fifth Avenue shopping sprees.

American companies, Apple chief among them, need to think of themselves as existing for their workers. That is the reason that businesses exist--so that their workers have something to do with their time. Profits for shareholders, making great products, and satisfying consumer preferences are so obviously less important things for a company to do than to create opportunities for people to go into a place every day, do something there is demand for, and be paid enough to support a moderate lifestyle.