There has been growth of wage labour in much of the Global South but it has been spasmodic, a product of the chaotic ups and down of capitalist industrial growth. And in very many cases, any growth in modern industry with "formal" employment has been overshadowed by what has been happening in the "informal" sector of very small businesses. The joint share of informal and small business activities of non-agricultural employment in Latin America as a whole rose from 40 percent in 1980 to 53 percent in 1990,34 while in Brazil half the occupied urban population were not "formal employees", although more than half of the informal workforce were wage workers. 35
In India growth has been even more concentrated in the informal "unorganised" sector, without workplace rights, while 40 percent of the urban population is self-employed-working in family businesses, usually without their own premises, or as vendors, rickshaw drivers, cart pullers and the like.36 In China too the informal sector has mushroomed-with the number of urban workers not officially classified and doing things "in the informal sector (such as street vending, construction, and household services)" growing by 79 million between 1 995 and 2002. By 2002 they amounted to 40 percent of urban employment. 37 In addition to-and often merging into-those in the informal sector, there are everywhere those denied any opportunities for employment by modern capitalism: the unemployed who typically make up 10 percent or more of the workforce in Third World cities. 38
The failure of regular employment in the cities to absorb the vast influx of labour from the countryside follows from the logic of capitalism. Competition on a global scale has caused capitalists to turn to "capital intensive" forms of production which do not require massive numbers of new workers.
338
The Runaway System