Nicholas
Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to
literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree
or disagree with him.
LIMITATIONS
OF GUILT
Not
too long ago, I was hanging out the washing when my eye was caught by the label
on the collar of one of my shirts. It said “Made in Bangladesh”. At once my
heart was pierced by the arrow of guilt. Bangladesh? Didn’t that mean that my
shirt was produced in some appalling sweatshop where child labour was exploited
and workers were paid a pittance? The very name evoked all the images we have
seen so often on TV documentraies about Asian wage-slaves, slums, child
prostitutes and callous international corporations who make millions out of
misery.
Of
course, all the counter-images kicked in too. Perhaps my shirt was produced in
some ethically-designed factory (there are some) whose employees were paid
decent wages. Perhaps there was some truth to the neo-conservative argument
that entrepreneurship always begins messy and exploitative, but this is a
necessary stage societies go through before humane captalism can emerge. Even
so, it was the negative images that dominated, and the existential distance
between me – middle-class Western consumer – and the impoverished people who probably
made the shirt.
In
an earlier post called Confessions of aHeartless Capitalist Exploiter, I’ve touched jocularly on the matter of
Westerners taking advantage of Asian traders and producers – but that post
concerned a very brief visit to Shanghai, and China is now a country more in
the exploiting than the exploited mode, with a growing state-controlled
capitalist, profit-based economy. But Bangladesh? That is a different matter.
So there was a real twinge of guilt.
All
of which brings me to the questions I pose today.
How
much guilt should we feel about enjoying the fruits of the labour of people far
more impoverished than we are? Are we, in effect, like new versions of those
people who once lived comfortably off the slave trade?
My
part in the cycle is a very small one. I bought the shirt from a New Zealand
retailer who, presumably, has to honour New Zealand labour laws about wages and
conditions owed to employees. As a consumer, I didn’t directly exploit anybody in buying my shirt. But (assuming my shirt
was made in the worst conditions I have imagined), doesn’t this still make me
part of the general pattern of
exploitation? Somewhere before the shirt reached me, it would have had to be
bought by an importer who profited directly from underpaid workers. At this
point, I think, left-wing people would
start talking about systemic
exploitation and – as they always do – would neatly by-pass the problem of individual guilt.
But
here is the problem. Are there not degrees of guilt? There is a big
difference between somebody who knowingly and directly exploits and underpays
workers, and somebody who has no conscious role in such exploitation. This is
not an argument for blissful ignorance, where I base my innocence on
conveniently “not knowing” how the system works. Once we are adults, we have a
duty to find out as best we can how the world works. But it is an argument for
recognising that guilt is a relative thing. If, as some ideologues say, guilt
is a systemic and general thing, then we are all guilty. And if
we are all guilty, then nobody is guilty.
Let
me give you an example of how the idea of collective guilt can work – and can quickly
become very dishonest. In occupied France during the Second World War, at most
about 2% of the population were involved actively in the Resistance. That is
quite a number of people when you think about it, given the dangers involved;
but it is still a small proportion of the population. The overwhelming majority
of the population did what people in all occupied countries did. They didn’t
like being controlled by a hostile force, but they kept their heads down, went
about their daily business, and just hoped these horrible times would pass. And
then there was a small minority who actively helped the occupying force –
joining paramilitary groups who assisted the Nazis in rooting out resisters,
joining the Waffen SS, coordinating round-ups of Jews etc. After the war was
over, such active collaborators would sometimes use the face-saving slogan “Everybody
Collaborated”. They meant that those people who didn’t actively resist were
also collaborators, because they kept society running under occupation. This
was a claim of collective guilt. But there is no way that I can see a teacher
or postman or truck-driver going about his business under such conditions as
sharing the same guilt as a French volunteer for the Waffen SS.
And
there is no way that I can see a Western consumer buying a shirt as sharing the
guilt of an exploiter of underpaid women and children.
Guilt has its limits. The idea of collective guilt can be a neat avoidance of individual responsibility. But we still have a duty to understand
how the world works.
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