Plantations Mafia & The Political Path Of Workers’ Struggle
In an earlier account published by the Financial Times we exposed the vested interests of Planters’ Association’s claim that tea estates are currently more or less loss making and therefore a wage increase of up to Rs. 1,000/= a day demanded by workers will ruin the industry. It was shown that Planters’ Association rests its argument against the workers’ demand on two main postulates. First postulate popularises the myth that plantations sector revenue depends on Sri Lanka’s tea auctions’ price (Rs. 581.58/= per kg in 2018 – CBSL) while in reality, the sector revenue changes according to tea export price (Rs. 820.75/= per kg in 2018 – CBSL) in global markets. Latter in general is over 40% above the former which is evident from above figures. Second postulate states that labour productivity of Sri Lankan workers is sharply below that of other tea producing countries due to their inefficiency and lethargy. Therefore, low wages in Sri Lanka according to the planters is to be blamed on workers themselves. We elucidated that rather than workers’ love for idleness it’s the mechanization of tea cultivation processes in other tea growing economies such as Kenya and Japan which led to the phenomenal increase in labour productivity and in turn created the conditions necessary to realise higher wages and profits in real terms while unit cost of production and the supply price of tea simultaneously reducing. Hence, we illustrated that by shifting the surplus generated in the sector outside itself into conspicuous luxury consumption and speculative investments, the planters coupled with licensed export firms deliberately stagnate the production forces and therefore maintain the colonial mode of exploitation even in the absence of colonial rule. In this light the above article is a necessary preamble to meaningfully connect with the proceeding argument.
In the following account we will explore the structure of the market forces or exchange and production relations which objectively impel the planters to reproduce itself in the guise of a feudal landlord class destroying the surplus generated in the sector on scandalous luxury consumption and speculative investments while production forces and the lives of the direct producers eternally stagnate. This is to say that we will explore the conditions which prevent the transformation of Sri Lanka’s feudal elite to a modern bourgeoisie within the restricted context of plantations. In the light of this we will explore the specific political path the workers should necessarily tread.
Absence of capital accumulation in the plantations sector by redeploying the surpluses in labour replacing machinery in the cultivation process emanates from the nature of the relationship the plantation sector establishes with world trade and the indentured nature of the labour force ossified into a distinct cultural unit from the community outside. Before further exploring the reasons into deliberate stagnation of production forces under the planters’ aristocracy we may look into the structure of capital deployed in plantations by disaggregating the difference and relationship between labour and land productivity in agriculture. It can be observed that apart from the wage bill of the plantations the predominant form of capital usage is in the application of fertilizer and hence working capital dominates the composition of capital as opposed to fixed capital in the form of machinery. It needs to be born in mind that application of fertilizer increases land productivity (per acre yield), which in turn increases aggregate output while output per worker or productivity of labour remains unchanged. This is so given that increased land productivity increases aggregate output and consequently, more workers are required in the harvesting process in proportion to the yield increase. Output per worker or productivity of labour therefore remains more or less unchanged while productivity of land increases through application of fertilizer while workers required per acre rises concomitantly. Hence, increase in land productivity does not reduce the unit cost of production and hence does not augment the price competitiveness of plantations. Although productivity of labour and unit cost of production remains unaltered with increasing land productivity, aggregate profits increase with the rise in output achieved through increased yield per acre. This indicates that nature of capital deployment in plantations is not shaped by price competition in the world markets. If so the redeployment of capital would be also absorbed by labour replacing machinery which in turn would simultaneously increase land and labour productivity while unit cost of production and supply price decline and wages and profits rise in real terms.
In the same vein it needs to be pointed out that increased labour productivity through introduction of labour replacing machinery, as opposed to capital infusions enhancing land productivity, will cause the aggregate output to remain unchanged while simultaneously increasing the per worker output or productivity of labour. The unit costs of production and supply price therefore decline coupled with rising wages and profits in real terms. This means to say that there is a dialectical relationship between labour and land productivity peculiar to agriculture, a key characteristic which distinguishes the latter from the dynamics of non-agricultural sector. Increasing land productivity while labour productivity remaining unchanged due to domination of working capital in the capital composition of plantations in turn erect conditions which enable the growth of profits while real wage rate stagnates. This is so given that wage rate cannot be increased beyond its productivity which is not altered by land productivity enhancing capital infusions. It means to say that in Marxian terms the mode of capital formation causes the rate of surplus value to remain unaltered. Consequently, the surplus is materialized in its absolute form as opposed to its relative form. Hence, extension of the working day in the absence of a corresponding wage payment remains the only method of augmenting the rate of surplus value which is widely employed by the planters and also in most other sector in the economy in general. This means to say that the rate of surplus value is high in Sri Lanka’s plantations while the mass of surplus value generated by a worker is low compared to an industrially transformed plantations, for instance in Japan.
