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THE word dialectic comes from the Greek »å¾±²¹±ô±ð°ì³Ù¾±°ìŧ — the art of discovering truth through opposing ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used it to explain how contradictions in economic systems propel change: dialectical materialism. I use the singular form ‘dialectic,’ not ‘dialectics,’ to emphasise that the tension between labour and capital is not a series of episodic confrontations but a single, continuous dynamic — an enduring process through which imbalance and resistance coexist, evolve and redefine each other.

Extending that logic to modern labour, this article explores the dialectic of disparity — a continuous process in which economic growth sustains itself by maintaining an unequal relationship between those who create value and those who appropriate it. In Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry, this contradiction is lived daily: millions of women generate immense value for the economy yet remain trapped in chronic wage disparity. Their deprivation is not incidental — it is structural, the living contradiction between those who produce value and those who extract it.

Profit and poverty here are two faces of the same coin. The deprivation of labour fuels the accumulation of capital, and every reform — whether higher wages or stricter safety rules — may soften the tension but never abolish it. The RMG sector exemplifies this paradox. More than four million workers, 80–85 per cent of them women, power Bangladesh’s largest export industry. Their labour sustains foreign exchange reserves, yet their welfare remains peripheral. Factories celebrate them as ‘export heroes’ while subjecting them to long hours, unsafe conditions, and pay that barely covers survival. Competitiveness built on chronic underpayment is not efficiency — it is institutionalised injustice. It transfers welfare from poor women’s bodies to corporate ledgers. This is the essence of the dialectic of exploitation: a system that survives by feeding on its own contradictions, where global prosperity and local poverty coexist symbiotically.

Marx’s notion of surplus value — the unpaid portion of labour — explains how profit arises from what workers do not receive. The RMG sector is a vivid laboratory of that theory. Economists measure labour’s share through the wage share of value added — the proportion of output that goes to workers after costs. The rest becomes surplus value captured by owners and brands. Approximate figures reveal the imbalance: Bangladesh — workers earn $120–140 a month, generate ≈ $500 in output → labour share ≈ 27 per cent. Vietnam — $250–280 wages, $600–650 output → share ≈ 42 per cent. Cambodia — $200–220 wages, $500 output → share ≈ 42 per cent. India—$150–180 wages, $450–500 output → share ≈ 35 per cent. Bangladesh thus shows one of the widest gaps between productivity and reward, even though its workers rank among Asia’s most efficient. The data expose a deliberate wage-suppression strategy — a race to the bottom where low pay is marketed as national competitiveness. Export success, in effect, is subsidised by invisible labour losses.

The injustice is also gendered. Women dominate the factory floors but occupy few supervisory roles. Their dual burdens — factory shifts followed by unpaid domestic labour — turn survival into endurance. Low wages push them into overcrowded slums, malnutrition and health hazards. Yet these women sustain both their families and the nation’s reserves. Each shipment leaving Chattogram port carries the invisible fingerprints of fatigue, fear and unhealed wounds. Many endure abuse silently, knowing that protest can mean dismissal or police batons. When unrest erupts, it is not spontaneous chaos but accumulated despair of suppressed humanity demanding recognition as citizens, not disposable labour.

Following the ouster of kleptofascist rule under Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh faces a critical juncture. After the interim government took office, widespread unrest broke out among RMG workers over long-standing grievances. Those protests were temporarily calmed through short-term adjustments, but the underlying discontent remains unresolved. Unless their demands are met through fair and compassionate negotiation, the unrest could erupt again at any time. The present calm is therefore not peace but pause — a brief window to rebuild the industry on dignity rather than renewed turmoil. Empowerment without dignity is hollow. Each new factory may symbolise progress, but every unpaid overtime or unsafe dormitory signals regression. The contradiction deepens: a nation that exports billions in garments imports despair in silence. It celebrates foreign reserves while its workers cannot reserve a single day of rest.

In recent months, this simmering tension has burst into visible defiance. Thousands of RMG workers — especially in Gazipur and Savar — have taken to the streets, blocking highways and demanding payment of arrears and a minimum living wage of Tk 23,000 per month. Their current pay, around Tk 12,000–13,000, barely sustains food and rent. Despite the government’s 2023 revision to $113 a month, real wages remain eroded by inflation, forcing families to skip meals and share cramped rooms. Arrests, factory shutdowns and dismissals followed these protests, but their persistence signals something deeper: the dialectic of disparity has reached a new stage of resistance. The women who once whispered grievances inside factory gates now articulate them on highways, transforming silent exploitation into collective voice. Their demand is simple but profound — fair value for their labour, not charity.

The interim government has streamlined airport facilities for expatriates and the diaspora whose remittances sustain domestic household consumption and foreign reserves. Meanwhile, workers in Export Processing Zones enjoy a labour regime that is virtually strike- and lockout-proof. By contrast, the RMG sector, the nation’s largest export earner employing over four million people, remains plagued by low wages, long hours, unsafe and unhygienic conditions, and recurrent unrest. At the core of this neglect lies a gendered reality: 80–85 per cent of RMG workers are women. They are the indispensable backbone of the industry, yet they remain its most disposable asset — underpaid, under-unionized and too often silenced by threats from rich and politically powerful factory owners.

International observers have begun to notice. Reports by global rights organisations and the foreign press criticise western brands — particularly in France and the EU — for profiting from Bangladesh’s suppressed wages while preaching ethical sourcing. These critiques strengthen the moral argument that wage disparity is not an internal inefficiency but an exported injustice embedded in global supply chains. The dialectic of disparity is therefore transnational: when a $25 shirt sells in London, the woman who sewed it earns barely a dollar from it.

Neighbouring countries show that improvement is neither utopian nor unaffordable. Vietnam integrates workers into social-insurance schemes and enforces dispute-resolution mechanisms that prevent violent clashes. Cambodia’s minimum-wage council, though imperfect, allows civil-society input and incremental gains. India’s large export factories maintain clinics and maternity benefits. Bangladesh, by contrast, has treated welfare as charity rather than entitlement. Social security, health insurance and childcare remain absent or donor-driven. The state functions more as an enabler of cheap labour than a guarantor of dignity. Such short-termism erodes productivity and corrodes moral legitimacy.

Every undervalued hour of Bangladeshi labour transfers part of its welfare abroad. The paradox intensifies when foreign earnings finance luxury imports or external debt instead of worker welfare. Thus, surplus value becomes surplus drain — capital flowing outward while human depletion deepens at home. Global brands cannot plead innocence. Their relentless price pressure forces owners to cut corners on safety and wages. Corporate audits and ‘ethical sourcing’ pledges often amount to public-relations choreography. True responsibility lies in fair contracts, longer lead times and price floors that respect living wages. The moral economy must extend beyond marketing slogans to binding obligations.

To resolve the dialectic — not abolish capitalism but civilise it — Bangladesh must convert exploitation into reform. Welfare is not charity; it is productive capital. Healthier, better-paid workers generate higher output and industrial peace. Reform requires three imperatives: a living-wage framework indexed to inflation and productivity; comprehensive health and childcare programmes co-funded by the state, factories and global buyers; and independent union representation ensuring negotiation replaces revolt. Clean, hygienic rest areas, safe housing and accessible clinics are not luxuries — they are the infrastructure of sustainable growth.

Compassionate capitalism cannot thrive within national borders alone. Western consumers must recognise moral co-ownership of exploitation: the $25 shirt sold in London or New York may embody less than $1 in wages for the woman who sewed it. If trade can synchronise prices and delivery, it must also synchronise decency. Ethical supply chains should be enforceable standards, not corporate slogans.

The dialectic of exploitation operates every minute — inevitable yet mutable. Bangladesh’s path forward lies not in breaking the capitalist order but in reforming its moral core. True competitiveness arises not from cheap labour but from dignified labour. The goal is equilibrium: profit without cruelty, growth without degradation, productivity with compassion. If the RMG miracle is to endure, it must evolve from a story of extraction to one of emancipation. Only when the women who built Bangladesh’s prosperity share in its rewards will the nation’s success cease to be a contradiction — and become, finally, a collective triumph.

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Dr Abdullah A Dewan, a former physicist and nuclear engineer at BAEC, is professor emeritus of economics at Eastern Michigan University, USA.