It's true that U.S. workers, white and otherwise, have been mostly
indifferent to the well-being
of peoples in the Third World. Though when unions negotiate, they don't
say "I want some
plunder," they just go for money with no thought as to what makes it
possible.
"Increases in absolute wealth" in the U.S. have been substantially
limited in the
past two or three decades for a pretty broad span of the population.
Whether "revolutionary immiseration" leads to revolution anywhere is another
story. Revolution proves to be a pretty rare event. Instead you have
imperfect
vessels of rebellion everywhere. How to deal with them is the usual
problem.
Matthijs Krul wrote:
I agree with this sentiment. I think that while support for Western
workers against Western capital, including their unions, is necessary,
we shouldn't conveniently lose sight of the fact that these unions have
been very succesful in negotiating with capital to share the spoils of
the plunder of the Third World with their members. The corruption and
reformism of Western major unions is not a coincidence - they are a
labor aristocracy in many cases, if you look at it from a global
perspective.
I think it is disingenuous for us to focus on the increase in relative
immiseration in the First World, even though that is of itself true,
because the increases in absolute wealth among (white) workers in this
part of the world have been so enormous that they cannot be swept away
as irrelevant by pointing at relative difference. Instead, we should
recognize that the social-democratic movement has had success in sharing
the profits gained from the real immiseration of the Third World, both
relative and absolute (although more so relatively), among First World
workers, sufficient to make the vast majority of them supportive of the
current world system. Therefore, the real revolutionary kind of
immiseration, whether you conceive of it as relative or as absolute, is
_for the greatest part_ going to be found in the Third World.
Matthijs Krul
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