The Core of the Apple: Degrees of Monopoly and Dark Value in Global Commodity Chains

Abstract

The capitalist world-economy takes the form of an iceberg. The most studied part which appears above the surface is supported by a huge underlying structure that is out of sight. Unlike the iceberg, the world-economy is a dynamic system based on flows of value from the underside toward the top. These include drains of surplus (expropriated value) We should think of the modern world-system as an iceberg economy in which uncosted labor and resources comprise the thicker submerged ice layers that are blocked from view beneath a thin top stratum that is counted as the visible official economy (Mies, BennholdtThomsen and Werlhof 1988). From this vantage point, we realize that the total world surplus is far greater than the cumulative GDPs. We also realize that commodity chains are far more than networks in which "value is added" at nodes.2 From a world-system perspective, these networks are exploitative structural relationships in which a vast array of unequal exchanges occurs among nodes of the chain and across zones of the world-economy (Wallerstein 1983). Indeed, 1 I would like to thank Wilma Dunaway and three reviewers for their suggestions about ways in which I could tighten and strengthen this essay. I would also like to thank Jennifer Bair for her encouragement and support. 2 I use the world-system conceptualization of commodity chain, although the careful reader will recognize the influence of later variants. See Bair (2009) for an explanation of differences among these approaches.

China’s increasing participation in ICT’s global value chain: A firm level analysis

“…In terms of governance and control of the GVC, Gereffi (2014) suggested that this was related to the complexity of knowledge being transferred from lead companies to networks of suppliers. For example, although a company like Apple has an increasing impact on the dynamism of China's high tech exports, in terms of international trade statistics it remains quite invisible, even though its managers are involved in monitoring production in its supplier factories and suppliers in some cases use equipment purchased by Apple (Chan, Pun, & Selden, 2013;Clelland, 2014). This is not to suggest that there are not considerable levels of innovation in China, but much of it is incremental in nature and is related to the functions in which most ICT companies in China are specialising, such as assembly (Brandt & Thun, 2011;Breznitz & Murphree, 2011).…”

Moving toward Theory for the 21st Century: The Centrality of Nonwestern Semiperipheries to World Ethnic/Racial Inequality

“…While scholars do not typically think this way, we have previously conceived global commodity chains to be chains of exploitation, grounded in stratified inequalities along racial, ethnic, class and gender lines (Clelland 2014(Clelland , 2015Dunaway 2012Dunaway , 2014. In short, these are the significant mechanisms through which capitalists structure and maintain ethnic/racial inequalities around the world, and they consist of thousands of sites at which battles against inequality must be waged if we are to effect worldwide change.…”

“…Compradors are those capitalists and state elites who do the frontline ethnic/racial exploitation within their own societies for their transnational class. One task of these cadres is to make production possible by draining both visible and hidden economic surpluses from ethnic communities (Clelland 2014). Through support from state elites, nonwestern capitalists super-exploit ethnic minorities in order to cement their positions in transnational capitalism (Clelland 2015).…”

“…These externalized costs are unseen and unpaid bills that are embedded in every commodity chain. Through their domestic development projects and their FDI in other countries, semiperipheries intervene in ethnic communities and households in ways that minimize production costs by allowing extensive use of conditions external to the production process (Dunaway 2012, Clelland 2014. Thus, capitalists shift to those groups, their ecosystems, their cultures, and their human laborers most of the real costs of commodity production, such as community and cultural displacement, land grabbing, ecological degradation, threats to livelihoods and health, debt bondage, and extreme forms of labor exploitation, (e.g., Kara 2012, Ferolin 2014).…”

Challenging the Global Apartheid Model: A World-Systems Analysis

“…Semiperipheral agriculture and industrialization are grounded in intense exploitation of ethnic minorities to secure low-paid and unpaid labor for national export agendas (Clelland 2014). …”