The following is from Vol. 2, page 69, of the Selected Works of Marx and Engels:
"Even with given limits of the working day, such as now exist in all branches of industry subjected to the factory laws, a rise of wages may become necessary, if only to keep up the old standard value of labour. By increasing the intensity of labour, a man may be made to expend as much vital force in one hour as he formerly did in two.
"This has, to a certain degree, been effected in the trades, placed under the Factory Acts, by the acceleration of machinery, and the greater number of working machines which a single individual has now to superintend. If the increase in the intensity of labour or the mass of labour spent in an hour keeps some fair proportion to the decrease in the extent of the working day, the working man will still be the winner. If this limit is overshot, he loses in one form what he has gained in another, and ten hours of labour may then become as ruinous as twelve hours were before. In checking this tendency of capital, by struggling for a rise of wages corresponding to the rising intensity of labour, the working man only resists the depreciation of his labour and the deterioration of his race."
Doesn't this describe how the UPS bosses have benefited by increasing the proportion of part-time workers who labor at such incredible rates of speed? Are they not able to subject these workers to an intensity of labor that more than compensates for the shortened work day, and more than compensates for UPS's vaunted "high" part-time wages. As Marx argues against Citizen Weston, high relative to what? When you went to the picket lines and met the number of part- time workers with wrist braces, on crutches, etc., you could see before your own eyes how these workers' lives were being expended at an above normal pace.
UPS complains that the nature of its business would make it impossible to convert these part-time jobs to full-time, but that's just code language for saying they won't hire more workers at a lower rate of exploitation to produce the same output.
UPS says it may have to lay off part-timers as it creates more full-time positions to comply with the new contract, but even if this eliminates some jobs in the short run, aren't those "jobs" we - as a class resisting the depreciation of our labor and the deterioration of our species - can do without anyway?
Pete Seidman
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Gulf War Syndrome
Two recent articles in the national and local press have
taken up the discussion of the cause of Gulf War Syndrome,
and the associated cover-up by the Department of Defense. Of
the 700,000 U.S. troops sent to the Persian Gulf, more than
110,000 vets have registered with federal agencies as
suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.
Symptoms include fatigue, skin rashes, muscle and joint pains, headaches and memory loss, gastrointestinal and respiratory problems. In the August 2, 1997 Atlanta Journal/Constitution a top Pentagon official stated that the Pentagon is investigating exposure to depleted uranium as a cause of Gulf War Syndrome.
U.S. and British forces used about 1 million rounds of armor-piercing shells containing depleted uranium during Operation Desert Storm. This is the first time that this toxic heavy metal, 1.6 times denser than lead, has been used in warfare. Depleted uranium was also used to construct the M1A1 tanks used by U.S. troops. The article cites a 1990 study which found that "short-term effects of high doses of depleted uranium can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer."
When shells containing depleted uranium explode, some of the uranium aerosolizes, increasing the risk of exposure through inhalation. While the army was aware of the danger, officers failed to warn or train the exposed soldiers, or to take any precautions.
Readers of the Militant may also be interested to read an article entitled "The Gulf War Within," which appears in the August 1997 issue of Discover magazine. The article explores evidence for exposure to a mixture of toxic chemicals as the cause of Gulf War Syndrome.
Recently, after years of denial and covers, the Defense Department was forced to admit that at least 20,000 soldiers may have been exposed to nerve gas, including the deadly sarin, released into the air from bombings of Iraqi ammunitions depots that contained chemical weapons. The CIA hinted in March 1997 that the real figure for those exposed may be closer to hundreds of thousands. Soldiers were exposed to at least four broad classes of chemicals: petroleum and petroleum products used for fuel and sprayed to dampen down sand and dust; pesticides and insect repellents, which were sprayed on uniforms, skin, and used to fumigate; drugs and vaccines, including pyridostigmine bromide, used to shield against nerve gas effects; and biological and chemical weapons.
The scientists theorized that pyridostigmine bromide, while shielding against effects of nerve gas, paradoxically prevents the body from detoxifying pesticides. Even evidence from Pentagon-sponsored studies conducted in the 1970s showed long-term effects in workers at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver who had been exposed to low doses of sarin. Low levels of exposure produced long-term changes in brain patterns, leading to fatigue, memory loss, sleep disturbances - all symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced last February that 80 percent of its logs pertaining to exposure to chemical or biological weapons, including from the ammunition depot bombings, had mysteriously disappeared.
Marla Puziss
Atlanta, Georgia
Political opponents
The quote from Young Socialists National Executive
Committee organizer and Socialist Workers Party leader Jack
Willey, "Whenever we fall into the self-defeating notion
that our political opponents prefer inactivity to activity,
you can be sure these currents are influencing and
recruiting young fighters who revolutionists could have
won," ["SWP holds national convention" in July 14, 1997,
Militant] rang true to me.
Militant readers will be interested to know that here, the Socialist Party of Australia, the traditional "pro- Moscow" Stalinist organization, renamed itself Communist Party of Australia in late 1996, in a move clearly designed to attract, influence, and recruit young fighters and others.
Doug Cooper
Sydney, Australia
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