this is long. i wanted to run through an outline of the history of outsourcing, and tried to be a concise as i could--what came out is too long for a post and too short for a coherent history, but there we are.....
in the abstract, the idea of "outsourcing" goes back to the earliest phase of capitalism--outwork was a basic element in early textile production, but was largely eliminated with the mechanization of spinning. but saying as much does not help you understand its present incarnation. and saying as much places you in a position where there is nothing anyone could possibly do except submit. a history digression might help to shorten the timeframe in which you think about this, and show that this situation in which we find ourselves is the result of particular choices made by particular concerns in particular political environments. and that all of this could be otherwise.
between 1860/70 and the 1950s, the main tendency in large-scale industry was toward spatial concentration--this concentration passed thorugh a series of phases/ideologies (scientific management at the turn of the century, fordism--assembly-line production--from about world war 1). the geographic logic of this period was to locate production near demand centres (this is clearer in europe--my specialty is france, so i think about this stuff through the french example)
outsourcing in its current form developed out of centralized production, partly as a consequence of a change in how corporations located their facilities (from the demand centres to rural areas where there were no unions, for example)...you see it starting in the early 1950s in machining. this can be linked to a series of general conditions:
1. firms running into limits to the standardization of production (like in machining)
2. the development of semi-automated machine tools
3. development of a dense transportation and communications infrastructure.
so here you already have two important features that drive outsourcing now--"inefficiency" introduced by working people actually controlling skill-sets; automation.
it started with firms contracting specialized machining firms that were able to treat a semiskilled activity as a problem for standardization on its own terms (this requires a basic reorganization of the process)....you can see this moving from a local phenomenon to a general industrial ideology across the 1970s (this sentence is a problem, but what can you do if you are trying to be quick?)....vertical integration, "just-in-time", etc. the basic feature that had conditioned the situation in which we find ourselves is the development of computer technology and a global transport/communications infrastructure--what we are typing on when we post is also one of the most important instruments for the disempowerment of workers yet developed by capitalism.
but technology does not have social functions on its own--the meanings of technologies are contingent on broader political parameters which they do not determine (human beings make history but not as they would like, as the old mole once said) modern "outsourcing" is only possible as a result of **political shifts**--the emblematic hatchet-persons are thatcher/reagan--e.g. in their undermining of the trade union movement (which was already much weakened)--the obliteration of any ideological frame that would require firms to think in terms of social consequences of their decisions about location/type of internal organization, the race to the bottom in terms of cost-cutting, which is what drives the race to the bottom in terms of wage levels.
you can find this general development in almost any industrial sector you look at--different analysts will choose different industries as paradigmatic when they try to work out the general history of these shifts--most i know of looked to automobiles (the regulation school)....
another way of thinking about this general shift is to think about the shift from multinational to transnational firms....
the point of this digression:
efficiency is a political category. it is not neutral.
cost is a political category. it is not neutral.
what firms can do is a function of what they can get away with.
conversely, what firms take into account is a function of what they are forced to take into account.
if you remove political brakes on capitalism, you get a capitalism in which human beings cannot live. except for wealthy human beings, who have always and alone been "free"--presumably they are free so the rest of us do not have to be.
problem:
the collapse of the left has created all kinds of problems for people who would oppose this kind of process. for example, they end up having to argue from a nationalist position. if you look at the positions outlined by groups like attac, you will see a vast symptom of this kind of political chaos:
www.attac.fr
existential problem:
no-one wants to find themselves in what will later turn out to be a "transitional period" but here we are. most people who live through these period vanish without a trace into the huge pipeline of history. and everyone likes to imagine that they will be the exception.
question:
does being alive in a period of political chaos--that outsourcing should be a problem is evident, but the ways to articulate that problem as political are not--mean that you should simply accept what is given to you by the economic forces that structure elements of your world?