his is certainly part of the answer, but it's not a settled question that the success of Western capitalism in delivering a steadily rising standard of living to the working class was wholly or even primarily due to imperialism. Dynamic technological change resulting in higher labour productivity has also to be taken into account. In any case, implicit in the notion of the labour "aristocracy" is that material betterment corrupts. It's a moral category, which, IMO, stands in contradiction to the historical materialist premise, generally supported by the historical record, of cultural advance through economic progress. ^^^^ CB: Well , it leads to political opportunism. This is consistent with understanding things in terms of workers pursuing their economic self-interests, and need not fall into "moralizing" or stray from materialist premises. In the US, Reutherism was opportunism, not having a class struggle based trade unionism, anti-communism, etc. Meany's leadership was the worst opportunism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy ^^^^^ There were also the labor lieutenants of capital in Lenin's discussion. Best to go look at what Lenin actually said. He isn't the type to fall into moralizing or out of materialist premises. Of course, now US autoworkers wages are being cut in two. So, your world historic shift is in play ^^^ It draws an exaggerated picture of the condition of skilled workers in the West, even after WW II. None of the people I knew were "aristocrats", or perceived themselves to be such. Most didn't pay attention to foreign policy and, when they did, their impulses were more often than not to be on the side of the oppressed. You would think from the theory that their representative trade unions didn't challenge capitalism and imperialism, and instead eagerly promoted both. That may have been true of American unions at the height of the Cold War, but it was not the general rule, not even in the US. If they only challenged capitalism and imperialism weakly, this had less to do with ideological conviction or the material stake they had in the system, but with a largely realistic appraisal of the balance of forces and limits to their own power in the workplace and political arena This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
