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Jerry, I don't think you have responded to Greenhouse's report that the
port truckers think of themselves as proletarians, employees whose ability
to form a union has been broken by the shipping firms choosing to hire them
only as independent contractors--they are not only interested in an
alliance with the working class but think of themselves as the working
class. It would seem that whatever value they add to the commodities moved
from port to warehouse falls to the shipping company. It's always the job
of proletarians to preserve gratis the value of constant capital as well as
produce new variable and surplus value. It seems that the truckers are
being forced to preserve that value directly while the shipping company
takes home the all the newly added value through unequal relations of
exchange with the port truckers who can thus be put back to work only if
the shipping company reinvests its surplus value. The structural depedence
of the port truckers on the shipping companies' decisions also indicates a
proletarian status. At least this is how it seems to the the port
truckers themselves, as one can only infer from Greenhouse's report.
Yours, Rakesh
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