Joyce C.H. Liu. (2023) “Cyber Slavery, Port Cities and the Systemic Cruelty: Logistics of Labor Extraction in the 21st Century.” Innovation in the Social Sciences. 2023.1: 211-233. DOI: 10.1163/27730611-bja10014.
Abstract
This article presents a theoretical analysis of the logistics of neoliberal slavery in the 21st century, focusing on the role of the port cities as the hinge in the supply chain through the case of the cyber scam industry of the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone. The hinge, in a metonymic and metaphorical way, connects a complex mobile networking system with a multi-dimensional and topological dynamism. The overlaid networks consist of a tripartite operation—the production, the market, and the law—and explains the persistence of human interest in profiting from surplus values through human labor extraction, and the violence and cruelty inherent in this. The logic of circulation no longer follows Marx’s analysis of M-C-M or M-M+, but the formula of V-M+. Through void with no cost, and violence with no law, there is no limit to the multiplication of capital.
Keywords: Asian Mediterranean; port cities; slave trade; SEZ; neoliberal slavery; Belt and Road Initiative; cyber slavery