I participate in another online forum where members seem to have a consensus that Workers of the Global North are the beneficiaries of imperialism. We are hopelessly corrupt and made fat, dumb and happy by our imperialist bourgeoisie. What we need to do, according to some folks, is to provide support to revolutions in the Global South because, God knows, we are never going to have one here.
This needs an intelligent answer. So, I sent a note to Tony, who pointed me to Charles Post's two-parter on the "Myth of the Labor Aristocracy" (thanks, Tony, I was only kidding about plagiarizing your work). I have read Post's two part on the Myth of the Labor Aristocracy (https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/128.html and https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/129.html), Zak Cope's critique of Post (https://www.emerald.com/books/edited-volume/15967/chapter-abstract/87628248/Global-Wage-Scaling-and-Left-Ideology-A-Critique?redirectedFrom=fulltext). And, finally, Post's answer to Cope. If you haven't read these already, It's not directly relevant to the question posed in this note's subject line. Post is presenting a sociological work critiquing Marx, Engels, Lenin and others who maintain that imperialism created a conservative layer on the industrial working class in the imperialist core countries. Called the "labour aristocracy," it acts as a corrupting influence on the working class and a brake on their radicalization. I like Post's essays. Nothing is more natural in Marxist theory than critiquing marxist theory, and particularly the greats. Post's model was internal to a national working class, however, but Zak Cope critiqued it from the standpoint of a solemn defender of Marx and Engels, neither of whom he seems to understand. and from his thesis on the global working class. Cope's thesis is that the working classes of the entire Global North from a labour aristocracy, but he bases his argument solely on wages and income, not production. He approvingly quotes "economists" from the American Enterprise Institute who were trying to prove that there were very few poor people in the US because so many housing units had air conditioners. From an orthodox Marxist perspective, Cope's thesis is ludicrous and Post's followup seems to have misapplied his own model. But Zak Cope is himself ludicrous having renounced unequal exchange, anti-imperialism and Marxism after 10/7; he became a devoted defender of Israel from a hostile West (presumably not the US). Since that debate, 10 million US families lost their homes while people like Munichen and Soros made a killing buying and holding repossessed houses until the market upturn. Also, the US homeless population increased since 2010 from about 500 thousand to 750 thousand in 2020. Finally, sorry for the long note. The must-read on this topic is John Bellamy Foster's Introduction to Arghiri Emmanuel's Unequal Exchange, https://johnbellamyfoster.org/articles/introduction-to-the-updated-edition-of-aghiri-emmanuels-unequal-exchange/. I'm going back to my holiday in San Francisco. Thanks for reading this. Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#43130): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43130 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120882561/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
