DONG Jingshu*

 

Abstract: As capitalist society develops from a producer society to a consumer society, from the dominance of material production to the rise of non-material production, and from the dominance of labor-intensive industries to the rise of knowledge-intensive industries (accompanied by the shift of labor-intensive industries to the Third World countries), the generation and composition of the “Surplus Population” in Western developed countries have demonstrated new historical characteristics. The capitalists not only refuse to solve the problems they have created but even “besiege” these unfortunate victims by moral and legal means. They marginalize and stigmatize the “Surplus Population” with work ethics, to severely damage the moral foundation for them to enjoy human rights. They reach an agreement for the welfare system, criminal practice, and work ethic to reinforce social indifference and hostility towards the “Surplus Population”, pushing them into a more difficult human rights situation, even excluding them from the scope of legal recognition and protection of human rights. However, the “Surplus Population”, which is considered “useless, redundant and dangerous”, is included in the process of capitalist production in a way that is excluded by the above-mentioned morality and law, becoming the “utility of futility.” As a result, the subjectivity of the “Surplus Population” as human beings is deprived.

 

Keywords: surplus population · human rights · capitalism · work ethics · welfare state · prison

 

 

The so-called Surplus Population is determined by the limit set by historical production conditions,¹ but there are specific differences in the composition and situation of the “Surplus Population” in different social forms, and even in different development stages of the same social form. The “Surplus Population” that this paper focuses on refers to the population that is temporarily or permanently excluded from the labor market and usually falls into poverty because capital, relying on the power of productivity development,² maximizes the ratio of surplus labor to necessary labor out of the instinct of multiplication. In a word, the “Surplus Population” is the logical and practical inevitable result of capital accumulation.³ It consists of three forms: flow, potential and stagnation.⁴

 

From the perspective of human rights, the problem of the “Surplus Population” clearly reflects capitalist countries lack of respect for human rights and their pretense of upholding them. They are the main culprits that have actually caused and aggravated the human rights tragedy of “Surplus Population”. However, in different historical periods of capitalism, the specific manifestations of this human rights tragedy are different. Compared with early capitalist societies, the exploitation and oppression of the “Surplus Population” and the active labor force by means of the “Surplus Population” are more hidden and serious in the later stage and more recent capitalist societies. Some modern Western developed capitalist countries represented by the United States (hereinafter referred to as “the Western countries” ) are the “models” for this.

 

In this regard, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman mentioned it in his Work, Consumerism and the New Poor, but he did not make a special and detailed examination. Moreover, Bauman, despite his insights on relevant issues, failed to reveal the root cause. On the basis of Bauman’s study, this paper attempts a more comprehensive and in-depth exploration of the human rights dilemma of “Surplus Population” in contemporary Western countries using Marxist theory. First of all, it is necessary to trace the economic transformation of capitalist societies, so as to clarify the specific differences in the generation and composition of the “Surplus Population” before and after their transformation, as well as the historical inevitability of suffering and inhumane treatment. Second, this paper explores how capitalists, in the name of the work ethic, carefully whitewash their inhumanity toward the “Surplus Population” and severely undermine the moral basis for the “Surplus Population” to enjoy human rights. Furthermore, this paper discusses how the “Surplus Population” is like a beggar in the face of declining welfare, and how it is like a slave in the iron cage of “criminal capital” in the legal aspect. Finally, a seemingly paradoxical topological structure shall be revealed: the moral-legal segregation of the “Surplus Population” — the exclusion of them from the moral-legal sphere of recognizing, caring for, and protecting human rights — which serves the function of being beneficial to capitalist production. Therefore, the “Surplus Population” is regarded as a “utility of futility” and are no longe viewed as human beings.⁵

 

 

According to Bauman, capitalist society has experienced a shift from heavy capitalism to light capitalism, which mainly means that capital has changed from defending a stable order, and from the obsession with the fortress and boundary constructed by “large factory buildings, heavy machinery and large-scale (hired) labor”⁶ to a passion for fence breaking and mobility — this is the diagnosis of the modern world by Bauman in the specific aspect of capitalist society as being “liquid.” However, this paper believes that the connotation of the distinction between “heavy” and “light” can be fully understood from the following dimensions:

 

 

Early capitalist society was a typical producer society, which does not mean that there was no consumption (just as the consumer society does not mean that there is no production), but that the focus of the social operation was on production, and consumption was usually limited to meeting the basic needs of middle and lower class workers, who accounted for the vast majority of the social population. Frugality was promoted as a virtue.

 

With the rapid rise of productivity, many people (in developed countries) have almost forgotten or even can no longer understand the concept of “scarcity,” and the number and variety of goods far exceeds people’s real needs, but capital never stops trying to capture more objects into the net of commoditization. However, the capitalists, whose sole purpose is to maximize surplus, use various means to disguise the truth of the growing surplus of commodities and strongly stimulate people’s desire for commodities. At the same time, if the commodity holder keeps and uses a commodity for a long time, he/she will not have enough driving force to disuse and abandon the commodity, which is nothing but a nightmare for capitalists. Therefore, the concept of disposable consumption is implanted in people’s minds by capitalists.⁷ “Exchanging the new for the old” (the faster, the better) has replaced“cherishing whatever I have” and become a new moral code. Although it is not overtly preached in obvious moral terms, advertisements that publicly exclaim that “yesterday’s products are not worthy of today’s you” are now taken for granted. This de facto compulsion to consume (on a large and continuous scale) appears under the guise of “consumer freedom.” Consumers, ignorant of their role as “laborers ‘hired’ by the capitalists to clean up the goods,”⁸ splash money on this illusion of freedom. A late and current capitalist society is a typical consumer society.

 

 

The production of an early capitalist society, no matter whether the knowledge content of labor is high or low, is basically material production: workplaces, labor facilities and labor products are tangible and material. The costs of the capitalists include not only the costs of hiring the necessary labor of workers, but also the costs of driving and managing workers, building, buying, leasing, using, and maintaining workplaces and the facilities used by labor, and so on. The dominance of material production implies the aforementioned obsession with “large bodies (factories, machinery) and large scale (wage labor).” However, it costs a considerable amount — although much less than the surplus value created by workers — and productive labor is often fixed in some physical space.

 

The birth of digital technology makes capitalists see the possibility of greatly promoting cost reduction and surplus value proliferation, facilitating capital to break through geographical barriers more freely, and promoting production labor to break free from the constraint of a fixed physical space. Thus, with the help of capital, the digital age has arrived. The new productive labor — digital productive labor — and related industries have emerged, sweeping the world with incredible speed, breadth, and depth. Since digital labor produces non-material products such as data, not only the digital platform R&D and maintenance technicians employed by capitalists are digital producers, but also the digital platform users can be appropriately called digital producers. As a result, (1) the cost is significantly reduced. Digital capitalists do not have to pay for factories and machinery (in many cases, simply using the digital infrastructure is enough to solve problems), nor do they have to provide platform users with the same salary and welfare and working conditions as hired technicians.⁹ (2) Surplus value increases rapidly. This is due to a combination of factors: first, the expansion of the production sector. Because of the ubiquity of digital capital, areas that were previously considered to have nothing to do with commercialization, or to be very cautious about commercialization, are one by one influenced by commercialization, which expands the consumption position while also expanding the production position. The second is the expansion of the scale of “non-hired labor.”¹⁰ A large number of platform users have joined the production force, and the natural and social restrictions on hired labor, such as age, gender, and education level, have almost all been lifted by platform users. So even as digital capitalists slash wage labor, the size of non-material production labor in general has soared. The third is the extension of working time. The strictly limited working time for employees becomes “flexible working time” with no external normative control for platform users. The more avid users are in “surfing” the platform, the more labor time they put in. “Labor addiction” is a related concept that may at first sound implausible. Platform users are often unaware of their role as workers, especially those on entertainment consumption platforms, who position themselves as entertainers or consumers. When they are deceived and tempted¹¹ by capitalists to indulge in entertainment or consumption, they are precisely exploited as labor. In this way, platform users, who play the triple roles of entertainers, consumers and producers, no longer care about their real situation because of their entertainment desire, constitute the solid masonry of consumer society because of consumption addiction, and are raked over surplus value by capitalists because of their subsequent labor addiction of which they remain unaware. (3) The spatial barriers of capital and productive labor are easily removed. With the power of digital technology, capital can cross any physical border and go any place. Moreover, digital production labor can be performed not only at any time in the world as mentioned earlier, but also in any place in the world, as long as workers have digital devices such as cellphones and computers.

 

 

The material production structure of early capitalist society was dominated by labor-intensive industries. Although compared with the medieval period when hand craftsmanship was prevalent, the vigorous development of big machines provided conditions for driving down the price of labor and eliminating the meaning of labor,¹² and even led to the marginalization and even exclusion of some proletarians from the labor market, capitalists’ demand for labor is still relatively strong and stable. The Fordism model is a typical model for stopping labor loss and displacement and welding workers to production lines.¹³

 

The rapid advance of technology, combined with the increasingly global flow of capital beyond the borders of sovereign states, concurs¹⁴ in the decline of labor-intensive industries in many areas, especially in Western countries. On the one hand, scientific and technological progress means that more and more “low-knowledge” labor (hereinafter referred to as “low-knowledge”) can be done by machines with higher quality and efficiency, except for some knowledge labor that is still not capable of being done by machines. It is also cheaper to build, buy, lease, use, and maintain machinery than to buy, use, organize, and manage labor. On the other hand, the increased global mobility of capital means that capitalists in surviving labor-intensive industries tend to look to Third World countries for hired labor, because both the price of labor and the cost of other social responsibilities (such as environmental protection) are more “cost-effective” than at home.¹⁵ As a result, the need for capitalists to employ uneducated labor, especially labor in Western countries, has been greatly reduced.

 

The economic transformation from the early capitalist society to the late capitalist society in the above three dimensions can tell that the process is indeed a transition from “heavy” to “light”. The idea of a consumer society (endlessly) “cleaning up goods” replaced the idea of a producer society “accumulating goods.” Capitalists do their best to reduce the physical elements (they even want to make the physical body disappear) and throw off the burdens, ignoring the once solid boundaries and order, and moving ever lighter and more constantly in the pursuit of profit.

 

Against such a historical background, the generation and composition of “Surplus Population” in contemporary Western countries takes on new historical characteristics:(1) The rise of non-material production means that exploitation is not limited to wage workers. “Non-wage labor” (such as platform users who are often unaware of their role as workers) is equally, if not more “ideal” for exploitation. Because they do not know the fact that they are working (and “making free marriage clothes for others”), they are more conscientious. Digital capitalists, then, are better and more ambitious at reducing the size of the hired workforce. And digital capitalists can be “legally” indifferent to “non-wage labor” such as platform users without taking any responsibility (including providing jobs) for them, even if they are unemployed and displaced in the real world outside the network. (2) The rising knowledge-intensive industries require higher levels of education, so capitalists often use their own labor from Western countries. But the cost of hiring such labor is also usually high, so capitalists try to drive costs down in other ways, such as replacing human labor with machines whenever possible, and moving labor-intensive industries to Third World countries. This means that for low-knowledge workers in Western countries, the employment space is increasingly squeezed, and they face long-term and even permanent unemployment (while low-knowledge workers in Third World countries sacrifice their youth, health and even life for work in “sweatshops”). It can be seen from (1) and (2) that the “Surplus Population” in contemporary Western countries exhibits a tendency to increase. Moreover, its reserve as an “industrial reserve army,” that is, the possibility of being absorbed by the labor market, has also been greatly weakened. The proportion of stagnant “Surplus Population” in the total “Surplus Population” rises. Lastly, (3) the consumer society means that the most “valuable” objects of exploitation are not only tireless producers, but also tireless consumers. For the “Surplus Population” of contemporary Western countries it is not only more difficult to enter the threshold of production activities than in the past, but they are also unable to afford the large-scale and continuous “consumption task” of cleaning up commodities imposed by capitalists because of poverty. As a result, the “Surplus Population”, eliminated and abandoned by both production and consumption activities, has further lost the possibility of “bargaining” with capitalists, and it is an inevitable result that they are increasingly being rejected and treated more cruelly.

 

However, capitalists always try to cover up their inhumanity toward the “Surplus Population” by transferring or “washing away” their own guilt, while at the same time turning this inhumanity into a sharp tool to discipline the proletarians (including the “Surplus Population” and the active labor force). This paper will next explore the human rights dilemma of the “Surplus Population” and the reasons for this dilemma from the moral and legal levels (typical of the welfare system and criminal practice) respectively.

 

 

The “stationing” of the work ethic in Western daily discourse can be traced back to the birth of capitalist society, which is by no means a coupling on the time line. Rather, the work ethic is the magic moral weapon “invented” by capitalists to discipline the proletarians. Moreover, the more popular it is, the more it will impact the moral foundation for the “Surplus Population” to enjoy human rights. To be more specific:

 

The work ethic can be highly refined and summarized as “work is justice.” Specifically, this commandment contains both positive and negative dimensions. On the positive side, in order to maintain a living and pursue a better life, everyone should engage in valuable labor. On the negative side, idleness and laziness are not only the cause of poverty, but also moral malaise.

 

However, starting from Marxism, we can penetrate the appearance to the essence, and see into the secret behind the above commandment, namely, the alienated labor of capitalist society, and the moral hypocrisy of capitalists to this alienated labor. First, the positive dimension of the commandment implies at least three things:

 

(1) Work is “labor with value.” However, the “value” here is neither social value in a broad sense nor the personal value of workers, but the value created by workers but obtained and plundered by capitalists. “Labor with value” is wage labor with the necessary value paid and possessed by the capitalist and the surplus value without compensation.¹⁶ So, on the one hand, “worthless” labor that does not bring real money to the capitalist is not considered work, such as women’s domestic labor. This discriminatory understanding still prevails today.¹⁷ On the other hand, “labor with value” is a form of slavery for the laborer or worker who is a proletarian. From the perspective of the labor process, the worker is not willing but forced to work and externalize himself. From the results of labor, “the relation of the worker to the product of his labor is to an alien object... The more power the worker expends in his labor, the greater is the power of the object world which he himself has created against him, which is alien to him, the poorer is himself, his inner world, and the less is there for him to own.”¹⁸ From the essence of labor, in the dimension of what should be, labor is the free and active life of human beings. However, in the real dimension, due to the brutal exploitation of capitalists, labor has become the means to barely support the physical survival of human beings, and the operation of physiological functions has become the last and only purpose of human beings. The line between man and animal is blurred.

 

(2) It is through work that life and the pursuit of a better life can be maintained, and only through work can life and the pursuit of a better life be maintained. However, neither of these statements holds water. In the first half of the statement, for the worker, because he is engaged in alienated labor, “the increase in value of the world of things is in direct proportion to the decrease in value of the world of men.” “The more value he creates, the less valuable and inferior he is.”¹⁹ It is the alienation of labor that “produces” the material and spiritual poverty of workers,²⁰ and even reduces them to the condition of animals. The “good life” is nothing but a lie. In the second half of the statement, for capitalists, it is not their own labor that makes them able to live in extreme luxury, but the result of the expropriation of the labor of the proletarians. Thus, on one side are the proletarians who “work without gain,”²¹ and on the other side are the capitalists who “gain without work.”

 

(3)The vast majority of people can afford to work and be rewarded for it. On the one hand, however, in addition to the “born” part, sound labor ability also has acquired and trained parts (such as literacy, operating machines, operating networks, etc.). These are often what workers cannot afford on their own. On the other hand, even if there is a sound ability to work, it is impossible to achieve employment if there is a lack of jobs. Thus, first of all, the “vast majority of people” itself is an assertion that needs to be proved in concrete time and space. Second, the ability to work is conditional, and the ability to work is not equal to the opportunity to work. The “vast majority” do not necessarily have jobs and are not necessarily rewarded by jobs.

 

The opposite dimension of the commandment also does not stand up to scrutiny. (1) Not working is the root of poverty. But, as mentioned earlier, the capitalist is rich not because he works hard, but because he enjoys the abundant surplus value created by the proletarians. The hard work of the proletarians not only fails to make them happy, but also leads them to material and spiritual poverty. And, “the overwork of one part of the working class forces another part of it to have nothing to do, and the inactivity of one part forces another part of it to have overwork.”²² This also proves once again that the emergence of the “Surplus Population” — that the proletarians “do not work” — is not because they “do not want to work”, but that they “cannot work”. (2) Not working is a moral malaise. This unconditional moral stigma against not working is conflated with an unconditional moral bragging about work (no matter why or how it is done). It achieves the goal of imposing spiritual coercion on the active workforce (i.e., “you must work, and you must have no doubt about the work itself”), while placing the “Surplus Population” in a morally “abnormal” position and thus subject to moral criticism or even rejection. But in fact, it is capitalists and the capitalist system that should be pinned to the pillar of moral shame.

 

After revealing the secret of the work ethic, further exploration will find that the function of the work ethic in early and late capitalist society has differences in similarities. In the same way, it shapes society’s negative image of the “Surplus Population”: The “Surplus” in the term “Surplus Population” has the meanings of being useless, redundant, and possibly even dangerous (see the analysis below) like garbage. However no one should be “surplus.” It implies the derogation and elimination of what is the essence of being human, which constitutes the denial of fundamental human rights.

 

In terms of differences, as mentioned above, early capitalist society is a producer society relying on material production and dominated by labor-intensive industries, so the demand for hired labor was quite strong. When capital mobility is not yet unrestrained, global industrial chains are not yet constructed, and especially when domestic welfare systems are not yet mature, the demand for domestic hired labor is high and (large-scale) unemployment is usually cyclical or temporary. At the same time, in order to fully release the value of these hired labor, capitalists must control them effectively. Then, on the one hand, “not working” is not tolerated, because “not working” means preventing the capitalist from obtaining as much surplus value as possible with sufficient labor. The work ethic here assumes the function of driving the proletarians to work. On the other hand, in the case of active labor, when “labor with value” is distorted to be only valuable to capitalists, the proletarians suffer a painful separation between what is and what ought to be, that is, the disconnect between what they actually do (alienated labor) and what they consider worthwhile and meaningful (labor that they themselves consider valuable). But the work ethic masks this division, instead issuing the commandment that “work (no matter how or why it is done) is just.” This is aimed at weakening and even depriving the proletarians of their ability to reflect and resist,²³ and effectively domesticating the proletarians to produce surplus value continuously for the capitalists.

 

In contrast, the demand for hired labor in recent capitalist societies (in particular, the demand for hired labor in contemporary Western countries, especially the low-educated labor in domestic hired labor) has been greatly reduced as mentioned above. The labor market is persistently saturated or severely saturated, and it is difficult to reduce, much less thoroughly solve, the situation because “(full) employment” has become the mortal enemy of “economic growth” (capital surplus). Therefore, the focus of governance in Western countries is not only “how to drive the proletarians to work,” but also the increasingly serious problem of “how to deal with unemployment and poverty caused by unemployment”, that is, how to deal with the problem of the “Surplus Population.” It must be noted that to deal with does not mean to remedy. To remedy means to eradicate unemployment and poverty, but unemployment and poverty are the logical and practical results of capital accumulation, and the only way to remedy that is to eradicate the capitalist system.Therefore, capitalist society can only “deal with” (in fact, avoid and cover up) the problem, so long as it maintains its existence.

 

In this historical context, the negative dimension of the work ethic commandment takes on a greater mission to “keep pace with the times”: Those who “don’t work” are in poverty and at the bottom of the hierarchy because they deserve it. They are moral outliers, “intractable, socially alien, hostile, and incomprehensible people, far more dangerous than anyone expected.”²⁴ The responsibility that should have been ascribed to the state and society, and ultimately to the capitalists, was shifted to individuals. In order to maintain “economic growth,” capitalists have tried to cut down on hired labor, which has created a growing “Surplus Population.” However, they accuse the “Surplus Population” of having “chosen” a morbid lifestyle of not working, so that the “Surplus Population” must pay for its “choice” (suffering material poverty and moral condemnation). This is the truth of the liberalism that is bragged of by Western capitalism: it cries out for free choice and the consequences of choice, but never tells people that free choice is conditional. This means not only that the right to “choose employment” can only be exercised under conditions of employment possibility, but also that “choosing employment” is a false rhetoric of freedom even under conditions of employment possibility, because in a capitalist society, the proletarian who wants to maintain himself “properly” has no choice but to sell his labor to the capitalists.²⁵

 

To morally separate the “Surplus Population” from others (to divide them into “abnormal people” and “normal people”) is to shake the moral basis for the “Surplus Population” to enjoy human rights. But this moral segregation is only the first step. The next step is to “justify” segregation at the legal level, recognize, maintain and exacerbate the human rights plight of the “Surplus Population” legally. For this, the welfare system and the criminal system are typically employed.

 

 

The welfare state is a manifestation of the state’s recognition and protection of citizens’ human rights at the legal level (in addition to the most fundamental right to survival, it also includes the right to development, the right to health, the right to education, the right to work or the right to labor²⁶, and other rights that make the existence more decent). The realization of welfare is to provide citizens with health care, education, employment, and other services through taxation. The rise of the welfare state is generally interpreted by Marxist scholars as a tool to ease class contradictions, maintain capitalists’ economic exploitation and political oppression of proletarians, and protect and reaffirm the principle of social inequality by alleviating the most intolerable social inequality. However, this interpretation needs to be further supplemented, otherwise it cannot provide a fully convincing explanation of the expansion to contraction of welfare policies in some Western countries.²⁷ The in-depth discussion should still be based on the historical background of capitalist social and economic transformation, and sort out the relationship between the welfare state and the work ethic, so as to clarify the misunderstanding and have a clearer understanding of the decline of the Western welfare state and the human rights dilemma of the“Surplus Population.”

 

At first glance, the welfare state is at loggerheads with the work ethic, for the welfare state idea declares that the state should ensure a life of dignity for all its citizens. Whether they contribute to the common good or not, people who don’t work have a right to respectability. This is an (drastic) shock to the work ethic. But on closer examination, the welfare state is actually a necessary supplement to the work ethic, and the two work together to consolidate the capitalist system and play different specific functions at different times:

 

In early capitalist societies, the welfare system was not initially implemented — it was a price the capitalists would not bear to guarantee a “dignified life” for the proletarian with their own income (even though none of it was the income of their own labor but was soaked in the blood and sweat of the proletarian). However, as Marxist scholars said, with the political awakening and resistance of the proletarians, the capitalists made compromises on the premise of maintaining their dominant position (and at the same time, stifling the proletarian’s fighting spirit), and the welfare state entered the historical stage under the banner of “human rights” (especially positive human rights)²⁸. But this is only one dimension of the answer.

 

Another dimension of the answer is that, as mentioned earlier, in early capitalist societies, capitalists usually need a large number of competent hired workers and exercised effective control over them. Therefore, on the one hand, it is necessary to cultivate a labor force and its reserve army with work skills and work ethics. On the other hand, the unemployed who have been domesticated by the work ethic should also be “helped” to be ready to return to work (that is, to “normal life”) at any time. That is the function of the welfare system, but it does not stop there. In the heyday of the welfare system, the range of subjects enjoying benefits and the range of affairs covered by benefits were almost “no missing corners” and quite broad. It is precisely the use of wealth from all taxpayers (including capitalists and proletarians) to guarantee the “dignified life” of all citizens that creates the concept of “collective commitment”²⁹and “social solidarity,” covers the class contradictions with a tender veil, and makes the proletarians fall into the illusion of class harmony, thus further losing the ability to reflect and resist on the basis of the domestication of work ethics. However, the capitalists continue to seek a “more effective” welfare model: not only to ease and cover up class antagonism, but also to make the proletarian fight among themselves. They also cut welfare payments to the proletarians and make them “take it for granted.”

 

This wish has been gradually realized in the late capitalist society, or it can only be realized in the late capitalist society. Because in this era, “economic growth” has become antagonistic to “(full) employment” and is deeply tied to large-scale and sustained consumption. As a result, many workers, especially those in Western countries with low knowledge, find it difficult or even impossible to get or return to work, and thus have no or no more ability to consume. While they continue to “violate” the work ethic, they also continue to “violate” the consumption ethic. Therefore, they become completely “worthless” to the state (and ultimately to the capitalists). They are not only unworthy of being “invested in,” but even a financial burden to the state.

 

Thus, reductions, both direct and disguised, in public welfare are a consequence. The scope of welfare recipients will be reduced, and some universal welfare programs that benefit everyone will be transformed into selective welfare programs that benefit only certain groups of people, who must pass strict “economic tests” (whether they meet certain poverty standards); Or the scope of things covered by benefits (for example, the scope of medical affairs covered by free health insurance) will be shrunk; Or the size of some welfare funds can seemingly remain, such as pensions, but actually “shrink” because of rising inflation; etc. The latter two are assumed not to hurt others, who can supplement their own reduced public benefits by buying commercial insurance. The prosperity of commercial insurance, and even the state’s active encouragement of individuals to purchase commercial insurance, go hand in hand with the decline of public welfare.

 

The shift from universal to selective welfare programs may seem like “targeted” care for the poor and unemployed, but the opposite is true: On the one hand, “the poor always get the worst service.”³⁰ Only in terms of employment, re-employment and poverty alleviation, the “Surplus Population” actually sees no hope, and is almost permanently imprisoned in the cage of “moral defects.” This double poverty, both material and moral, is also a “warning” to the active labor force. The more they have to “consolidate” their role as exploitation-oppressors, the more forcefully they are pushed into the ranks of the “Surplus Population.” On the other hand, it creates a clear distinction between those who give and get nothing in return (taxpayers) and those who get something without giving (the “Surplus Population”).³¹ The people who pay taxes but do not enjoy these benefits (either the active labor force already permeated by the toxin of the work ethic, or the capitalists who know the secrets of the work ethic and are happy to take advantage of it) unleash and incite anger, and the (even if superficial) notions of “collective responsibility” and “social solidarity” collapse consequently. However, this breakdown does not necessarily exacerbate class antagonism, but rather breeds and reinforces estrangement and resentment among the proletariat: The working proletarians not only resent the company of those who do not work (or indeed cannot work), but also resent the “one-way payment” for their welfare. This is precisely what the capitalists are happy to see, because the discontented proletarians have difficulty uniting against their common enemy, the capitalists.³²

 

Thus, the welfare system makes peace with the work ethic, which weakens both the ability of the proletarians to reflect and resist, and the unity among the proletarians.³³ However, the synergy between the two is intentionally concealed, and the socalled “ideological contradiction” between the two is intentionally amplified: A welfare system makes industrious people pay for lazy people and hurts the work ethic. As the result, the “Surplus Population” is branded with a deeper moral stigma, and is more marginalized and stigmatized than before. The legal obligation of the state to provide assistance and relief to the “Surplus Population” has been further reduced or even exempted “naturally.” Thus, that the “Surplus Population has a dignified life” has become nothing but an empty lie.³⁴

 

As mentioned above, the “surplus” of “Surplus Population” means that it is as useless, redundant and even dangerous as garbage. And the disposal of garbage is either recycling or discarding. They keep garbage out of their own world, and ignore the birth and death of garbage, even letting it vanish after exploiting the last pitiful value. In fact, the way Western countries deal with their “Surplus Population” is essentially the same as the way they deal with garbage. However, it has become difficult for the late capitalist societies to recycle the “Surplus Population” in recent years. The “Surplus Population” is almost deprived of the opportunity and ability to be employed or re-employed. The decline of the welfare state is a response to the “uselessness and redundancy” of the “Surplus Population” (unable to engage in production labor or consumption, not needed by the state or even being a burden of the state). Next, other responses will be examined: overseas emigration, community divisions, and judicial practice — especially criminal practices (including relevant criminal legislation and prison conditions). In addition to consolidating the “useless and redundant” image of the “Surplus Population,” they also configure and strengthen the “dangerous” image, thus “legitimately” putting the “Surplus Population” into a deeper predicament of human rights.

 

 

The disgraceful image of being “useless and redundant” has made it difficult for the “Surplus Population” to get sympathy and understanding. And when some of them are forced to fall into the abyss of crime, the image of the whole “Surplus Population” is “tainted”: not only is it useless and redundant, but also dangerous. It can be said that the worsening of this “Surplus Population” image is also welcome and encouraged by capitalists. Once again, they cast their victims as perpetrators. They let the negative emotions of other “lucky” people who still have jobs pour out on this “national cancer” while forgetting, ignoring, or failing to recognize the real cancer. Capitalists even use these negative emotions to consolidate their rule. The more angry and fearful people are, the more capitalists are able to use “security and order” as a political campaign slogan and as a bargaining chip in the governance of the country, so that the regulation of people that actually infringes on freedom and rights (and gradually increases) will not attract resistance. But this will only exacerbate frayed nerves, not ease but increase anger and fear, that is, the conflict between the proletarian (the active labor force) and the “Surplus Population.”³⁶

 

As for the regulatory measures mentioned above, the most typical is physical, or spatial, segregation: Separating the “Surplus Population,” which is “useless, redundant, and dangerous,” from the world of “normal people” is like dumping garbage on the outskirts of the city far from living areas. One way of doing this, mainly in early capitalist societies, was to “emigrate” (more bluntly and less pretentiously called expulsion), to gather the “Surplus Population” and send them to overseas colonies, provinces, or “virgin lands” far from home. However, with the independence of the colonies, the overloaded population of the provinces, and the comprehensive occupation and development of the “virgin land.” there is less and less space for “emigration”.

 

Thus, when the “global solution” to local problems fails, solutions have to be found at home. The first is the kind of segregation between communities that are so common in Western countries: a sharp divide between the gilded rich and the grimy slums, with sturdy walls and fences, a dense network of alarm and surveillance devices, and security guards who patrol back and forth... These things have made the rich areas a defensive bulwark against the “Surplus Population” of the poor areas. In fact, “safety” is indeed the most common golden signboard for property developers in wealthy areas to attract residents. However, as mentioned earlier, this rendering of “security” only serves to maintain, or even reinforce, segregation (i.e., zero communication) and the resulting misinterpretation and dislike of each other by the rich and the poor.

 

Another way is to resort to laws, including criminal law, to deal with the “Surplus Population” problem as “illegal and criminal.” Unemployment + poverty = law violation/crime. At first glance, this equation seems strange, because it goes against the legal and moral common sense of criminalization based on external behavior, and treats the existence of a particular subject (the “Surplus Population”) as being a crime itself (although the description of the crime is often embellished). This is a serious form of discrimination and injustice, but it does reflect the reality that contemporary Western countries do everything they can — even to the point of betraying the spirit of the law — to segregate the “Surplus Population.” The following section examines the case of the United States in detail.

 

Article 250(6) of the US Model Penal Code stipulates loitering, and its charges have been expressed as: Loitering or wandering in places, times and in ways that are abnormal to ordinary law-abiding persons, causing panic for the safety of person or property to others in the vicinity. The US Kansas Criminal Code stipulates vagrancy, and its charges have been expressed as: (1) engaging in an illegal occupation; Or (2) a person over the age of 18 who is able to work has no legal means of earning a living and is not employed or refuses to seek employment; Or (3) wandering in the community without proper means of earning a living; Or (4) wandering in the streets and places open to the public with the intent of prostitution or immorality; Or (5) to live entirely or in part by begging.³⁷ The pertinence of these crimes (mainly the pertinence of the crime subject³⁸) is very obvious, and the “Surplus Population” is undoubtedly the main object of capture, which is segregated from society.

 

Here, “segregation” contains at least three meanings: (1) The first is, of course, segregation in the legal sense. Just as the changes in the welfare policies of contemporary Western countries mean that the “Surplus Population” and the rest of the citizens are divided into two worlds in the legal sense, the criminalization of the “Surplus Population” also distinguishes them from the rest of the citizens as legally “normal” and legally “abnormal.” (2) Second, it is also moral segregation. The law is usually considered and indeed plays the role of the defender of the basic public morality of society.³⁹ Criminal law, in particular, is considered the strongest guardian of bottom-line morality. So breaking the law is often evaluated as a moral defect at the same time, and crime is defined as the most serious moral defect. Hence this point culminates in the stigmatization of the “Surplus Population.” (3) Finally, crime is likely to lead to the aforementioned spatial segregation. Members of the “Surplus Population” who commit crimes (no matter whether it is the crime of “identity”, such as “loitering” and “vagrancy”, or being engaged in other crimes forced by livelihood needs or caused by taking revenge on society) will be put in prison. Prisons are just a dumping ground for the “Suplus Population” like colonies, provinces, virgin lands and local slums, although perhaps the worst.⁴⁰ Those outside the prison who are legally and morally “normal” and “superior” are really concerned only with the solidity of the prison walls (that is, the effectiveness of spatial segregation) itself. For example, from the “security level” distinction⁴¹ of prisons in the United States, it can be seen that people are more satisfied and reassured by the prisons with a higher “security level” and less possibility of prisoners escaping. Almost no one cares what happens inside the prison walls or how criminals are treated.

 

However, it is necessary to reveal the conditions of the criminals inside the prison walls. In addition to their role as prisoners, they are consumers, labor (extremely cheap labor), and may be denied even the most basic physical security. This situation is particularly prominent in America’s booming private prisons.⁴² When private capital permeates and controls the machinery of violence that should be the monopoly of the state, the goals of criminal justice and crime prevention and control are subordinated to profit, and the human rights of prisoners are sacrificed on the altar of capital. To be more specific:

 

Prisoners as consumers. At first, this may seem inconceivable. However, in some private prisons in the United States, plastic cups must be paid for in order to drink water, and radios and headphones must be purchased to watch television with “sound”⁴³... Thus, in addition to expropriating other prisoners, private prison capitalists attempt to extract the last vestige of “consumption value” from the “Surplus Population” that has been almost eliminated and abandoned by the consumer society outside prison. And this kind of oppression does not violate any existing US law.

 

Prisoners as extremely cheap labor. Private prisons in the United States accept orders from many institutions, including enterprises, and become an “outsourcing base” engaged in production and processing. This does not contradict the aforementioned “local employment saturation.” Precisely, when capitalists who have moved labor-intensive industries around the world to cut employment costs find that the cost of hiring labor in the Third World is also rising (and these workers demand higher pay and better working conditions), they are bound to find new ways to cut costs. The inmates in the local prison would be “ideal” targets for exploitation. They do not sign any form of employment contract with capitalists, are not considered wage labor by the state, and have no equivalent contractual obligations, and have no trade union organization as the backing to defend and fight for their rights. As a result, during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, private prison inmates produced millions of dollars’ worth of supplies and received an average hourly wage of as much as 2 dollars and as little as 12-63 cents (way below the legal minimum hourly wage in the United States).

 

Thus, more prisoners and longer sentences mean fatter surpluses. Therefore, private prison capitalists, represented by CoreCivic, Inc.,⁴⁴ the largest private prison enterprise in the United States, try to exert influence on American Legislative Exchange Council and other institutions and governments at all levels by means of political contributions. They call for “improvements” in criminal policy across the country, including efforts to privatize prisons and push for “tougher and faster” convictions. The implementation of these policies have not only expanded the number of private prisons, but also increased the number of people incarcerated and the duration of incarceration, which further inflated the pockets of capitalists.⁴⁵ It is understandable that the loudest calls for the abolition of the death penalty in many American states have often come from private prisons and the politicians and institutions with which they are deeply connected: They want to abolish the death penalty not so much out of genuine respect for human rights, but because long or life sentences create more surplus value than those on death row. At least in the case of “Surplus Population,” then, the needs of the state and the needs of private prisons form an unbreakable alliance. The former does not need and does not want to assume any obligation for the “Surplus Population.” The latter is driven by economic benefits and urgently needs the “Surplus Population.” So in the United States, instead of thinking about how to reduce crime, they think about how to “increase crime.”⁴⁶ It is not surprising that the existence of the “Surplus Population” is even criminalized to incite anger, hatred and fear of the “Surplus Population.”

 

Prisoners are not guaranteed personal safety. Out of profit, private prisons in the United States not only extract the surplus value of prisoners, but also cut costs by reducing the salary and welfare of security personnel and reducing the facility conditions of private prisons. As a result, private prisons are poorly managed, and prisoner suicides, sexual assaults, murders, fights,⁴⁷ and physical violations by jailers (including but not limited to insults, abuse, beatings, and deprivation of privacy) are common. Prisoners are also maimed or killed due to a lack of medical care. Especially since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, many prisoners have failed to receive effective treatment and epidemic prevention.⁴⁸ Moreover, they have also been used as “cannon fodder” for tasks that should be the responsibility of the state, such as transporting the bodies of COVID-19 victims with minimal or no protection, and serving on the frontline of putting out the raging wildfires in California. Of course, if a prisoner has enough wealth and power, it is not difficult to lead a “comfortable” prison life (with no or little productive labor, personal safety, and even preferential treatment). However, the “Surplus Population” unfortunately thrown into prison clearly has no such “blessing” and can do nothing to improve the bad situation.

 

Thus, it can be seen that a significant number of prisoners, including the prisoners of the “Surplus Population,” are no different from slaves, and private prisons are no less than “slave factories.” It not only means that private prisons enslave prisoners in productive labor, but also means that private prisons themselves are “factories” for making slaves. It seems absurd that this happens in the United States, which has always been a champion of human rights. It is, however, a “constitutional absurdity”: According to Section 1 of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, slavery and forced labor are prohibited within the United States or any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, except as a punishment for a person lawfully convicted of a crime. However, slavery is firmly rejected by the laws of modern civilized countries and strongly attacked by morality precisely because it constitutes a serious violation of human rights. Then the abolition and attack should be unconditional. This provision of the amendment to the United States Constitution actually preserved the barbarous remnants of slavery and even permitted the treatment of prisoners as slaves in the form of the fundamental law of the state. What a cruel irony it is that human rights are violated in the name of the Constitution.

 

If the above criminalization of “Surplus Population” and related criminal measures are analyzed more deeply, it can be found that this is a very terrible “abnormal routinization” or “illegal legalization.” Indeed, the “Surplus Population” of the unemployed and thus poor is no longer uncommon in some Western countries, such as the United States. But mass unemployment and poverty without access to effective relief remain an anomaly, even a disgrace, for a “civilized country” worthy of the name. This is because fundamental human rights are universally recognized and protected, including by law, which is the normal situation and even the bottom-line requirement of civilized countries. However, some Western countries have resorted to criminal laws, which are usually considered routine and a means of defending human rights, to deal with the “Surplus Population”: By defining anomalies as routine crimes (that is, “abnormal routinization”), the behavior of the “Surplus Population” and even the very existence of the “Surplus Population” become indistinguishable from other crimes, and the real social problems are thus obscured. Moreover, the “Surplus Population” was not only treated criminally, but also “legally” forced to consume, enslaved in production and labor in prison, while no one even cares about their lives. The law is no less than the tool for the economic exploitation and political oppression of people by the capitalists. Criminal justice is subordinated to the pursuit of maximizing the economic benefits of capital. And this is the “illegal legalization.” What is more frightening is that the United States still has the above-mentioned “illegal constitutionalization,” which, as the fundamental law of the country, has become more and more toxic to human rights practices. But the people who are taught to have “faith in the law” are completely unaware of such conditions. Under the admonition of “sanctity of law/constitution” and the aforementioned demonization of “Surplus Population,” the qualification of “Surplus Population” as human beings is “legally” and “constitutionally” reduced or even almost eliminated.

 

Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why in the United States, the so-called “educational rehabilitation” function of criminals is difficult or even impossible to be afforded. In particular, the “Surplus Population” is almost impossible to return to society, but can only “return to prison” — the educational function is deprived of the necessary conditions to play its role: For the “Surplus Population” who has no human rights or only enjoys naked “abstract human rights,” segregation and slavery are their “fate,” and it is meaningless to talk about “educational rehabilitation.”⁴⁹

 

 

As a society with the rise of non-material production, labor-intensive industries moving overseas and the domination of consumers, the later capitalist society, especially in Western countries, have an increasingly large “Surplus Population.” Because they can no longer gain wage labor and cannot afford consumption, these bottom-of-society proletarians have lost the “family base” to fight and claim their rights from capitalists. However, capitalists not only refuse to pay for the problems they create, but even carry out numerous “besiege and suppression” of these unfortunate victims by moral and legal means, making the latter regarded as outliers in morality (by means of the work ethic), as burdens (by means of the welfare system), and even criminalized in criminal practice, and put into prison to squeeze the residual value. Their basic human rights are seriously violated.

 

However, the “Surplus Population,” which is explicitly or implicitly defined as “useless, redundant and dangerous,” is actually incorporated into the capitalist production process in a way that is excluded by the above-mentioned morality and law: The existence and situation of the “Surplus Population” make the active labor force fear falling into their ranks, for it means not only material poverty, but also degradation into an object of moral and legal contempt, even a burden and cancer of the state, and thus the rejection by other citizens. As a result, on the one hand, the active labor force works harder to hand over more surplus value to the capitalists, but it also accelerates its own decline into the “Surplus Population.” On the other hand, the active labor force is not only indifferent to the “Surplus Population,” but even hostile. This dissolves the proletarians — the active labor force and the “Surplus Population” from “pointing their guns together outward” at the real target (capitalists and the capitalist system), diverting their attention from class contradictions, the actual core problem. Thus, the “Surplus Population” plays the role of “utility of futility” and is deprived of its subjectivity as human beings. It can be seen that the exploitation and oppression of the proletarian by contemporary capitalism has become more and more hidden and serious. In this regard, we must adhere to sober cognition and correct judgment. We also need to resolutely refute and respond to the groundless accusations and shameless slander by Western countries against socialist freedom and human rights. 

 

(Translated by LI Donglin)

 

* DONG Jingshu ( 董静姝 ), Doctor of Laws, Lecturer, Law School of China University of Political Science and Law.

 

1. Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, Works of Marx and Engles, vol. 30 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1995, 2nd edition), 611.

 

2. Capital has only one instinct, which is to increase its value, create surplus value, and suck up as much surplus labor as possible with its own constant part, namely the means of production. Ibid., 269.

 

3. The definition of “Surplus Population” used here is from Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Economics Manuscripts 1857-1858, and Capital, etc.

 

4. The floating “Surplus Population” is mainly workers in cities and industrial centers whose employment situation is unstable or who oscillate between employment and unemployment. The potential “Surplus Population” consists mainly of surplus rural labor, who at the first opportunity flock to cities and industrial centers in search of work. The stagnant “Surplus Population” is mainly the population that is unemployed or has no fixed employment for a long time due to the lack of skills needed by capitalists, premature aging due to excessive labor, or other reasons.

 

5. Before proceeding with the following argument, it should be clarified that the generation, composition and situation of the “Surplus Population” in contemporary Western countries are determined by the logic of capitalist development, but are also affected by factors such as the total population and educational level of a country. If the total population of a country is small and the education level of its citizens is generally high, there is less possibility of surplus, and there is even a sufficient demand for labor, and the salary, welfare and legal environment are also superior. But this by no means signifies the conscience of the capitalist, who still obeys the profit-seeking nature of capital. So “Surplus Population” is not necessarily a (serious) problem for every contemporary Western country. In order to simplify and focus the argument, the following will not make redundant distinctions.

 

6. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, translated by Ouyang Jinggen (Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing Press, 2002), 89.

 

7. In recent decades, we have seen the emergence of the concept of FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) in Western countries and the mushrooming of many FMCG brands (such as Zara, H&M, Gap, etc.). They set the “trend” of the moment, and “trend” means rapid turnover, which is to encourage consumers to keep updating their products. But consumers don’t need to do so. The ideal situation for capitalists is one in which consumers discard goods like garbage the moment they buy them and quickly move on to the next purchase. Therefore, it is not surprising that Anders and Bauman say that being “short-lived” is the essential property of consumer goods. In the consumer society, only the disposers of garbage never lose their jobs.

 

8. Gunther Anders, a Jewish scholar, pointed out that in the consumer society, it is not so much the consumers who place orders to the merchants as the merchants who place orders to the consumers. Gunther Anders, The Obsolescence of Man: On the Destruction of Life in the Time of the Third Industrial Revolution, translated by Fan Jieping (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2010), 145. 

 

9. Capitalists will still exert as much effort to drive and manage the productive labor of platform users as they do to drive and manage the platform technicians they employ. By keeping the platform attractive to users and thus keeping them firmly attached to the platform, they achieve their goal of actively engaging users in digital production labor.

 

10. The reason why the relationship between digital capitalists and platform users is called non-employment relationship is that they are not like digital capitalists and platform technicians who have signed employment contracts and exercise rights and perform obligations to each other according to the contract. However, it could also be argued that there is a “visible employment contract” between digital capitalists and platform technologists and that each side is often properly aware of their respective roles. Digital capitalists have “invisible employment contracts” with platform users. Once the user decides to use the platform, he must accept the platform rules, and the surplus value created by the digital production labor he engages in is also possessed and used by the digital capitalist for free, and the necessary value created is settled by the capitalist in a way that allows the user to (continue) use the platform as a “wage.” But platform users are often unaware of their role as workers.

 

11. Some criticisms of “excessive entertainment” or “advanced consumption” also only limit platform users to the role of “entertainers” or “consumers.” Such criticism is either superficial or intentional to fabricate or reinforce lies. Not to mention, the overwhelming number of advertisements on the platform, with seductive images, constantly convey the following message: All things are and ought to be the prey of amusement, and all men join and ought to join in the feast of amusement. The “entertainers,” who constantly generate and consolidate the cognitive barriers of their characters and are encouraged to engage in “entertainment,” are rushing on the road to slavery.

 

12. In contrast to the medieval craftsman who could set his own goals, control the process, be in direct contact with the object of labor from beginning to end, and thus gain a sense of accomplishment from his labor, the productive worker on the assembly line of the big machine age could only passively complete the tasks set and controlled by the capitalists. He is not so much making the product as running the machine. Workers who aren’t at the end of the line can’t even see the final product. In this way, because they do not feel the meaning of labor, workers feel more pain in labor. As Marx put it, “labor has shown itself less worthy to be included in the production process, since man is related to it only as a caretaker and regulator.” Karl Marx, The Critical Outline of Political Economy (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1963, vol. 3), 356. 

 

13. The core of Fordism is to concentrate workers on productive labor. As Daniel Cohen, an economist at the University of Paris, points out, Ford’s aim was to keep workers on the production line, whether by strengthening worker management or raising wages.

 

14. It must be made clear that capital is not necessarily naturally intimate with any particular science and technology. It has shown little interest in the use and development of specific technological means that do not promote the reduction of costs, the increase of surplus, and the strengthening of control over the proletarians (which is also to reduce costs and increase surplus).

 

15. Bauman argues pointedly that the global flow of capital from Western countries means an unprecedented imbalance or even separation of rights and obligations: Investors enjoy the benefits of liquidity to the maximum extent and avoid the disadvantages of liquidity to the maximum extent. When they feel local obstacles or threats, they don’t even have to overcome them and bear them. Instead, they simply walk away with bulging purse and throw all the negative consequences on the local people. Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences, translated by Guo Guoliang and Xu Jianhua (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2015), 9.

 

16. Work is “labor with value” but “labor with value” is not necessarily considered work, such as those digital platform users mentioned above. They also engaged in “valuable labor,” but what they do is not considered work.

 

17. In this sense, Western feminists find the wrong target when they claim they want to free women from the shackles of the home, as if it were a cage for women. The real problem is not that women are constrained by their families, but that women’s domestic labor is not considered “valuable.” What a woman should strive for is that she can have the freedom to engage in family labor or not, and at the same time, the value of such family labor should be recognized and protected.

 

18. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2014), 48. 

 

19. Ibid., 47 and 49.

 

20. “Labor produces palaces, but sheds for workers. Labor produces beauty, but makes the worker deformed. Labor replaces hand by machine, but returns some workers to barbaric labor, and turns others into machines. Labor produces wisdom, but produces stupidity and dementia for workers.” Ibid., 49. 

 

21. Karl Kautsky harshly criticized that under the system of capital, the hired workers combine these two opposites — wages and starvation — and makes “the earning of wages from starvation” a matter of course. Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle, translated by Yun Daiying (Beijing: Central Compilation & Translation Press, 2013), 16.

 

22. Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 5 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2009), 733. 

 

23. Thus, it can be seen that under the action of the work ethics, wage labor in capitalist society produces not only goods, but also “subjects” of capitalists.

 

24. That was the definition of the underclass in an August 29, 1977, cover story in The New York Times magazine. As can be seen, this not only makes a completely negative definition of the underclass, but also attributes the negative factor completely to the individual. “Incomprehensible” means that the exhortations of moral commandments, including the work ethic, “do not work”, so it is the underclass who “choose” their pathological lifestyles. But in reality, the underclass has no choice.

 

25. Marx seriously criticized the falsity of “freedom of contract” in capitalist society. The complete freedom of contract includes the freedom of whether to make a contract, the freedom of choosing the object of the contract, and the freedom of deciding the content of the contract. But in fact, in capitalist society, the proletarian has to accept the contract, has to enter into a contract with the capitalist, has to enter into a contract involving 

the sale of his labor power to the capitalist. The worker “must choose his future between starvation and factory work.” See Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle, 12. However, in the late capitalist society, where the “Surplus Population” has been difficult to be “recycled” by the labor market, even their “choice” to work is denied.

 

26. Due to their respective reasons in history and culture, ideology, and institutional practice, different countries refer to the right of citizens with the ability to work to participate in social labor and receive corresponding remuneration as the right to work or the right to labor.

 

27. The welfare state emerged in the late 19th century, flourished after World War II, and began to collapse in the 1970s. See Jiang Yu: A Comprehensive Understanding of the Western “Welfare Trap”, Red Flag Manuscript, quoted from China Communist Party News Network 2018-2-26, accessed August 10, 2022.

 

28. The legal recognition and protection of human rights has experienced an expansion of the scope of the subject of rights and the scope of the content of rights: Proletarians are included in the subject of human rights, and negative human rights and then positive human rights (the welfare state is related to the responsibility of the state for positive human rights) are included in the content of human rights.

 

29. But in reality, the respective burdens of capitalists and proletarians are far from fair. Even if capitalists were taxed more heavily, that money would be a drop in the bucket for them. And even if the proletarians are taxed at a lower rate, they may not be well off after paying taxes.

 

30. R. M. Titmuss, Commitment to Welfare (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), 143.

 

31. R. Boyson angrily claimed that money was “taken from the energetic, the successful, the frugal, and given to the idle, the failed, the incompetent.” R. Boyson, Down with the Poor (London: Churchill Press, 1971), 5. However, it is still the proletarians and capitalists mentioned above who really work for nothing and gain without work.

 

32. There are other forms of obstruction to the solidarity of the proletarians: The less wage labor and the more “flexible labor” (“flexible labor”, that is, the “Surplus Population” in the form of mobility) make it difficult to form the kind of mutual understanding and solidarity that is formed in continuous organized production, and weaken the organization and strength of resistance to the capitalists.

 

33. Moreover, the working proletarians are thus so focused on “keeping the hand of the Treasury out of their pockets” that they care little about anything else, diminishing their enthusiasm for active public service. As Bauman argues, shrinking state welfare goes hand in hand with shrinking the number of politically active citizens.

 

34. Charity is also worth mentioning. Despite government encouragement and academic appeals for charity, including, of course, charity to the “Surplus Population,” the spectacle of mass charity makes everyday moral shock and moral indifference more bearable. Ultimately, they reinforce the belief in the exile of the poor in the moral world. Zygmunt Bauman, Work, Consumerism, and the New Poor, translated by Qiu Ziming and Li Lan (Changchun: Jilin Publishing Group Co., Ltd, 2010), 154.

 

35. The sources of data cited in this section include data from the Prison Policy Initiative report of American Public Think Tank, the website of the US Department of Justice, and the website of the US Criminal Sentencing Institute.

 

36. “The public is full of love for the armed forces that specialize in internal repression”, Slavoj Zizek, Push the Limits of What is Possible, translated by Ji Guangmao (Fuzhou: Fujian Education Press, 2017), 6. It can be seen that contemporary Western countries have “creatively” transformed the essentially oppressive political power into the implicit public security power, thus dissolving the proletarian’s vigilance against capitalists and dissolving their will to resist oppression.

 

37. Similarly, on July 29, 2021, the Los Angeles City Council passed a bill by a vote of 13 to 2. It makes it a crime to sitting, or lying down for sleep and pitching a tent within 500 feet of a “sensitive use” property, punishable by up to six months in jail or a fine of up to $1,000. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti immediately signed the bill into law. In addition, The Vagrancy Act in the United Kingdom also has provisions on the crime of vagrancy. Although there are some specific differences in content with the crime of vagrancy in the United States, in general, vagrancy is still treated as a crime.

 

38. Some people think that the relevant crimes in the United States (such as “vagrancy” in Kansas) are more like an “identity crime,” that is, specific people are the subjects of the crime, while “loitering” in the Model Penal Code of the United States is more general, targeting a certain behavior pattern rather than a specific group. But in reality, the latter remains a criminal law used to dispose “socially undesirable persons,” including the 

“Surplus Population”.

 

39. Despite the current trend of analytical positivist jurisprudence, in today’s world, the law is considered to be the de facto guardian of basic morality (whether capitalist or socialist morality). It is under this experience background that the positivist proposition of replacing legitimacy with legality is likely to prevail.

 

40. In the sense of spatial segregation, overseas colonies, provinces, “virgin lands”, and local slums are essentially no different from prisons.

 

41. For example, federal prisons in the United States are divided into five levels of security: (1) Administrative alert, which usually houses the most dangerous criminals. (2) High alert. (3) Medium alert. (4) Low alert. (5) Minimum security, which houses mostly non-violent offenders who are considered less dangerous to the public.

 

42. Private prisons are a type of prison system that emerged in the United States in the early 1980s in which private companies are involved in the business of supervising prisoners. In the name of “easing the pressure of housing and reducing the cost of incarceration,” the US government provides subsidies, with private funds, to build prisons to house criminals. America’s private prisons have boomed for decades: between 1990 and 2010, their number exploded 16-fold; More than 30 states have established partnerships with private prisons; In 2019, private prisons held 116,000 people in total; About six out of every 100 incarcerated Americans are in private prisons. It is handing responsibility to capital interests that should be borne by the government.

 

43. Frederic Pierucci and Matth Aron, le piège américain, translated by Fa Yi (Beijing: China CITIC Press, 2019), Chapter 7. 

 

44. CoreCivic, Inc. has been listed as one of the 400 “Best Large Companies in America” by Forbes. With the highest purpose of “creating value for shareholders,” the company went public in 2000. In 2020, the revenue reached 1.9 billion US dollars, 82.2 percent of which came from its private prison business.

 

45. In addition to the fact that a growing number of inmates creates more surplus value, subsidies are another reason why private prisons want to expand their inmate population: The contract between the private prison and the government stipulates that the private prison can receive a certain government subsidy for each inmate it accepts; The government also has to pay for all the empty beds if private prisons do not reach 90 percent “occupancy”. The “kids-for-money” incident in Pennsylvania, which shocked the whole country, was a case in which a private prison bribed judges to sentence juveniles to “speedy” misdemeanor crimes and “import”them into the private prison continuously.

 

46. The United States is a “prison nation” with about two million prisoners, the highest proportion of a country’s population worldwide.

 

47. According to Gold Digger, an American weekly magazine, there are 28 percent more assaults among inmates in private prisons than in public prisons.

 

48. Liu Chenghui, US prisons have been hardest hit, with 20 percent of inmates infected, Guancha, accessed August 15, 2022.

 

49. “Any consideration of the interests of convicted criminals is seen as being against the public interest,” David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 180.