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presidents..five secretaries did the same work now being<br />
done by seven or eight deans, assistant deans and assistant<br />
vice-presidents - and did it very well." (9)<br />
The historic trend has been to sharply dilute the<br />
role of productive workers even in vital industries. In food<br />
products, for example, the percentage of total employment<br />
that is non-production (managerial, supervisory, technical<br />
and clerical) rose from 13% in 1933 to 32% in 1970. A<br />
similar development took place in the chemical industry,<br />
where non-production employees rose from 16% of all<br />
employees in 1933 to 37% in 1970. (10) In manufacturing<br />
industries as a whole the percentage of non-production<br />
employees went up from 18% to 30% in 1950-1980. (11)<br />
When we look at the overall distribution of<br />
employed Euro-Amerikans, we see that in 1980 whitecollar<br />
workers, professionals and managers were 54% - a<br />
majority - and service employees an additional 12%. Only<br />
13.5% were ordinary production and transportation<br />
workers. That is only 13 out of every 100 employed Euro-<br />
Amerikans. By 1982 there were thought to be more Third-<br />
World domestic servants in California alone than Euro-<br />
Amerikan workers in the entire U.S. steel industry. (12)<br />
2. New Babylon<br />
The observation was made by the Black Liberation<br />
Movement during the 1960's that modern Amerika was<br />
just "slavery days" on a higher level - in which U.S. imperialism<br />
as slavemaster made the entire Third World its<br />
plantation and Amerika itself its "Big House." The real<br />
economy of the U.S. Empire is not continental but global<br />
in its structural dimensions.<br />
The U.S. oppressor nation itself has increasingly<br />
specialized into a headquarters society, heavily dependent<br />
upon the super profits of looting the entire Third World.<br />
This is more than just a matter of dollar transactions. Born<br />
out of the slave trade and the conquest of Indian lands,<br />
raised up to power through colonial labor, the U.S. oppressor<br />
nation has again developed a one-sided<br />
dependence, even for its daily necessities, on the labor and<br />
resources of the oppressed nations.<br />
The Wall Street Journal said recently: "By last<br />
year the U.S. sales to Third Worlds countries had swelled<br />
to 39% of its exports, from 29% in 1970." (13) This even<br />
understates the relationship. Afrika, for example, accounts<br />
for 10% of all U.S. export earnings by official<br />
statistics. (14) These figures conceal more than they reveal,<br />
not including, for example, the profits taken out of Afrika<br />
directly and indirectly by the European subsidiaries of<br />
US. multinationals, not the sale of third-party commodities<br />
- such as Saudi oil - by U.S. multinationals.<br />
Nor can such figures express the super-profits gained<br />
through unequal trade terms. The U.S. and other imperialists<br />
puchase from Afrika at bargain basement prices<br />
(often only a fraction of what they were 30 years ago)<br />
cocoa, coffee beans, iron ore, chromium, coal, mica,<br />
nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and so on. The basic<br />
raw materials of industrial life are taken by U.S. imperialism<br />
so cheaply they are the next thing to free.<br />
This economic dependency on the rest of the world<br />
was recently admitted by former U.S. Vice President Mondale:<br />
"Unless our exports grow, we cannot hope to recover<br />
from the recession.. . More than 20 percent of American industrial<br />
output is exported. One out of every six manufacturing<br />
jobs is linked to exports; four out of every five<br />
created bet ween 1977 and 1980 were export-related.<br />
Almost one-third of all corporate profits derive from<br />
foreign investment and trade. *Two-fifths or our farmland<br />
produces for export.. . " (1 5)<br />
The most significant trend to us, however, has<br />
been the export of capital in the form of production. This<br />
is the latest step in moving the work of essential production<br />
out of the oppressor nation. In the 1945-1965 period<br />
the loyal Euro-Amerikan workers received a mass promotion<br />
away from the proletariat, raising the majority of<br />
them out of the factories and fields and into the whitecollar<br />
professional, office, and sales world. Even in its<br />
origins this was only possible by replacing them with colonial<br />
labor, Afrikan, Puerto Rican, and Chicano-<br />
Mexicano.<br />
That early stage, in which the Afrikan proletariat<br />
took such a heavy role in industrial production, is now<br />
over. In the second stage the Empire is continuing to move<br />
productive work out of the oppressor nation. This is accelerating<br />
on a global basis now, with factories moving<br />
across the Pacific and southward below the Rio Grande.<br />
Even within the continental Empire new millions of colonial<br />
proletarians are being brought in from Asia, Latin<br />
Amerika and the Caribbean to both provide even cheaper<br />
industrial and service labor, and to permit the dispossession<br />
of Afrikans.<br />
Alarmed at the rising anti-colonial movement of<br />
the 1960s, the Empire has been replacing Afrikan workers<br />
as rapidly as possible. Images of the past persist. We recall<br />
how Afrikan proletarians, at the point of rebellion, were<br />
systematically dispersed out of the urban South of the<br />
1830s, and later throughout the 19th century driven out of<br />
the industry and skilled trades they had created.<br />
*Many of the largest corporations - such as Ford, GM,<br />
Exxon, Citibank, Coca-Cola - obtai~l over 50% of their<br />
138 profits overseas.