Whither Labor?

Unlike the previous chapters in this book, this chapter focuses on labor and so the subject matter is very different. In the previous chapters I have considered the subject of industrial-infrastructural development in Pakistan in terms of its historical and relational moorings and visions of material progress. By turning to the subject of labor, I underscore a key point that material progress is also intimately tied to the immobility and exclusion of others. In industrializing Pakistan, the powerful infrastructure networks and entrepreneurial efforts that have enabled connectivity and the flow of commodities and global trade have also relied on the relative immobility of labor. Labor remains the vital peg in the construction of economic value and one of the key foundations of industrialization. Since the dawn of industrialization, labor has been characterized as deeply connected with the state. In Western Europe and in America, scholars have illustrated how labor held governments accountable for policies that protected them against exploitation and outright abuse (Badie & Birnbaum 1983; Katznelson & Zolberg 1986; Rueschemeyer, Stephens & Stephens 1992). In nations like Germany labor representatives were incorporated into state bureaucracy through labor parties (Schmitter 1974). The mid-20th century saw newly emergent nation-states like Pakistan embracing industrialization as a vital pathway to modernization.