Labour Aristocracy

Comrades, I am confused about the concept of labour aristocracy. I have always assumed it to mean members of genuine aristocratic families that happen to be nonetheless poor, such as after Capitalist revolutions, and thus become a part of the proletariat and should be treated as such. However, I also see the concept used in referral to just rich proles in general who are not aristocratic at all. So what the fuck. Am I an idiot

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This is the meaning that I've always heard being used. It refers to workers who hold positions that are still technically wage-labor but they nonetheless enjoy such privileges and high pay that they both believe & act as if they are apart from the rest of the working class as a whole, esp. unskilled laborers

The term nowadays is fluid and pretty vague. Typically it's used rather to collectively refer to the first world proletariat, which while exploited, still profits from the more brutal exploitation of the third world proletariat. Or it's used to refer proletarian jobs such as being a doctor, lawyer, or the like while technically proletarian still pays extremely well and makes you very wealthy.

Couldn't it refer to both?

Yeah, I sure am profiting from having to compete with slave labor.

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pffff, shut up you nerd! what do you know
a real worker with revolutionary potential has to suffer absolute poverty and live in dirt, like a true third world revolutionary prole that'd never fall for such cheap tricks like social democracy to avoid potentially deadly struggle
only a coward first worldist thinks that Marxism isn't working in absolutes, so stop reading Marx all the time and THINK!
you are not poor, you have a computer ffs! you don't even understand basic socialist theory, unlike me! now stop pretending like socialism is an option and join me in calling everyone a first worldist
just literally stop doing things, you're just making socialism look bad!

The typical Third-Worldist line goes like this:
''Capitalists bribe workers in the First World with superprofits that accrue through production in the Third World."

It isn't true because:
a) The relatively decent working conditions and social welfare programs in the 1st world were all a product of Depression-era programs and regulations combined with the post-WW2 economic boom.
b) The shift of industry to 3rd world countries coincided with stagnating real wages and lower standards of living in the 1st world beginning in the 1970s and 1980s.
c) Today the workers in the 1st world are poorer than ever.

The only way superprofits would "trickle down" to the workers in the First World is if the profits were then redistributed through taxation. The problem is that this clearly doesn't happen since a major incentive to outsource production is to take advantage of tax loopholes.

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Damn bro your life sucks almost as much a slaves life

the true revolutionary subject is depressed people

Said social policies were made possible entirely through Imperialism. FW Company extracts value from the TW -> Wealth that FW company received is taxed by the Bourgeois state -> Taxed income from stolen resources/labour from the FW are then distributed via social programs to FW people.


Which is proof of the correctness of the TWist strategy for building revolution in the first world. As TW countries industrialize, the first world is forced to abandon social democratic policies - eg, those drafted in the post war era by a terrified FW bourgeois to temporarily placate the working class of the first world, and hopeful prevent themselves from getting the Romanov treatment. Social democratic reforms, wage increases in the FW, etc, ultimately benefit the FW bourgeoisie.

The thing is though, this strategy was never permanent, and was always totally unsustainable in the long term. Imagine the devestation it would cause the economies of the FW if Africa were unify under socialism and industrialize, robbing the bourgeoisie of cheap exploitative labour/resources, and the social democratic shields which have delayed real revolution in the FW.


Correct. Most FW countries are degenerating into failed socieites, and are gradually being forced to re-proleterize. The working classes of America and Britain are getting poorer. No smart TWist would deny this.


Let me clarify that actual Third Worldist (not confused Sakaists) *WANT* Revolution in the first world as much as anybody else. We can see most people are suffering - even if technically not exploited. Our claim isn't that people in the FW aren't suffering, or that there is "no proletariat in the FW". It is that the quickest, and most effective way to build revolution in the first world is to unify the third world under socialism. In our minds, the first-worldist strategy is the slow route.

America and Europe*

If you claimed, "First World development was only possible via imperialism" then no Marxist would disagree.

My disagreement is with this part:
See my post above.
I do not think that these superprofits are redistributed to First World workers in any significant way and the total loss of wages is greater than whatever gain could be had through redistribution of profits or through savings on cheap consumer goods. If someone can provide me with empirical evidence I'll change my mind.

It might not even be necessary since First World countries are rapidly approaching their economic breaking point.

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Worsening economic conditions, climate change, and degenerating social conditions will eventually force re-proletarization in the FW one way or another. I don't disagree with the premise. That being said, I don't see things reaching breaking point for a while yet. As rapidly as things are going down, the worst days in America are still nowhere close to "business as usual" in most of the capitalist world. If in India 49% of children are malnourished, hundreds of dalits are beaten to death and raped by right wing death squads and thousands of people dropping dead from hunger daily is every day life in India, and they still aren't approaching a real revolutionary situation, things are going to need to get a lot worse in the west before even basic rev activity becomes viable. We're 60-80 years away from conditions being right for that.

If a large portion of the third world - Say, India, or a significant portion of Africa were to be cut off via revolution, within the coming decades, it is plausible, given how conditions are deteriorating, that we could see real revolutionary struggle beginning in the FW in half that amount of time.

I've heard that the minimum wage in most western countries is only possible because of exploitation in the third world - also that even the worst paying jobs in the first world are still way over what they should be.

Most people in the first world are working unproductive jobs (literally nothing is produced, only managed and processed).

Source?

According to who? The market? I think you'll find that attempting to live on an entry-level job is way less comfortable than MIM, RAIM and LLCO made it out to be.

Some of the jobs that are defined as "unproductive" by bourgeois economists actually are productive (fast food, restaurant work and entertainment are good examples of this). Also, while its true that traditional industrial/agricultural jobs have declined they haven't declined as much as you might think–even in the United States. Likewise, mid-20th century Germany is probably the only capitalist society I can think of where (slightly) more than half of the jobs available were in industry.

This is a difficult claim to prove, it could be claimed that literally everything in actually-existing capitalism is only possible because of the existence of the Third World. However, the "Third World" is not necessary from the standpoint of pure theory and TWists actually start from this fact, however, despite that their gripe with traditional Marxism stems from this fact–they don't do a better job of explaining its existence than the classic Marxists. They resort to mere historical chronology to explain its evolution and see the existence of the Third World-First World divide as a symptom of a capitalist system working imperfectly.

I find it funny how first worlders are still clinging to their rapidly disintegrating social welfare states all the while voting for parties and politicians who continuously chip away at it. It's poetic in a way. The worst thing for global communism would be if Bernie or Corbyn actually succeeded in reestablishing imperialist welfare systems. First world communists should be focusing their efforts on ending their wars and dis-empowering their militaries.

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Please get some new hot takes. I can almost reassure you it won't make any difference. The biggest gains that communism ever made in the West besides the commune was when the modern welfare state was being built up (30s) and when it was at its height. The fact that its decline has not caused first world populations to move to a higher stage of class struggle but actually to regress shows that the essential element of the class struggle was never the existence or non-existence of the welfare state in the public. The fact that the Third World is hyper-capitalist but we don't see socialist revolutions in the 21st century seems to be enough to show that mere misery on its own does not create class consciousness or revolution.

There was even a welfare state in Victorian Britain, which you would know if you'd read Marx instead of the Bible. I'm sure that the "accelerationists" would be telling Marx not to hope for revolution in Britain as long as there were poor-houses, work-houses, charity, and poor relief.

Summary:
"Immiseration of the proletariat does not lead necessarily lead to communism or even class consciousness."

Imperialism throws a wrench in the entire situation. Lenin is superior to Marx with respect to political-economy. This has been known for decades user.

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Don't forget transportation. (emtertainment is defo non-productive though, come on now)

Until probably a few months ago I would have agreed with you. But Marx disagreed with classical bourgeois economists that a worker had to produce a “tangible” commodity to be considered productive.

Consider a night-club singer, she doesn’t make anything tangible except some sounds she produces for maybe a few hours which dissipates the moment she quits singing. Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that the sound that she produces is material even if fleeting. What sets Marx apart from Smith on the topic of
productive labor is that for Marx productive labor is that labor which is productive for the capitalist, which produces a profit for him.

The capitalist who owns the night-club reaps a profit from fans who are drawn to see the singer perform live. If the capitalist later hires the singer for his own personal entertainment, however, then the singer’s labor is not-productive since it’s consumed directly as a use-value (similar to how the labor of personal maids are not productive)

critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/productive-versus-unproductive-labor/

what are these takes

Labour Aristocracy means that person is in high position and receives a high wage. For example a basketball player or manager.

Wow, Phil Greaves looks young here

What did he mean by this

Hey I actually learned something and got my opinion shifted, thanks user

It means proles who make lots of money, e.g. in excess of what a small business owner (petty bourgeoisie) could make. Some people use it to refer to famous actors and the like. Others use it to refer to the entire developed world and tie it to exploitation of the third world. Some even go as far to say that there is no first world proletariat, and that we're all petty bourgeoisie.

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I thought it was unelected union bureaucrats that were the labor aristocracy

Wait are you saying India isn't rioe for revolution? What about the Naxal/CPI-M led people's wars? What about the ethnic stratification in Sri Lanka?

The labor aristocracy are the house negroes of the proletariat.

They're not "rich proletarians", they're the bureaucrats in charge of managing collective bargaining with capital, who've become so entrenched in their own meditative nature, that they've subordinated the interests of their fellow workers to the bosses.


It's not that they're unelected that's the problem. The problem is that they don't represent the union's workers. Having them be subjected to election and recall would just create better conditions of representation, but the fact that they aren't isn't the problem.

M8, it's basic Marxism that stuff tends to exchange near value. If two companies produce the same thing and company A requires only half the work time company B does because company B uses outdated technology, that doesn't mean that company A exploits the workers at company B. There are huge areas in Asia and Latin America where you don't have proper fucking roads, you have to drive through mud, all of these problems with shit infrastructure and old tech add up so it takes more work time to produce stuff.

To show the "Maoist" Third-Worldist analysis to be correct, you would have to show that the richest countries all intervene in the rest of the world in a similar way. But there is no equivalent in Europe to the military might of the USA, nor do the rich countries have a similar share of colonial history. Look at how many people today in Africa speak French, and compare that to the few speakers of German in Africa (Namibia mostly). So, just looking at Africa, wouldn't you expect France to be much richer than Germany? (France regularly gets tons of money from Africa in form of interest payments on debt, by the way. But all of that doesn't remotely play a role of the size that you think it does.) Some rich countries are much more involved than others while having a similar standard of living. How do you square that with your belief of where the wealth of the rich countries comes from, by adding a type of non-observable exploitation that fills gaps as you need them to be filled?

This

Careful with that terminology (if you want to use Marxist definitions). Marx talks about realtive immiseration, that is, the relationship of the wage to the rate of exploitation, not the actual infliction of human misery. Workers in the First World are more exploited than workers in the Third World - a worker in a car factory produces ten times more value per hour because he can press a button for a robotic arm to montage a piece, than a Bengali woman who sews in a sweatshop. The crucial part is the purchasing power: Prices in Bangladesh are so high, that she is objectively much poorer than the worker in the First World. This is why lolberts and conservatives keep regurgitating the argument that people in a sweatshop "are paid what they're worth" - the real hard pill to swallow is that they are technically right. They are being paid according to the value they produce per labor time unit. Where Marx was wrong was that he thought that with the increasing rate of exploitation, workers would experience more and more misery, but since modern imperialism was established, this isn't necessary the case.

So in the end, Third Worldist are kind of right, but for reasons different than most of them think. The real problem keeping those countries down is unequal exchange, particularly resource extraction and export of commodities manufactured by these resources to a higher price back into the developing countries. Pdf related

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You leave out how state handouts ramp up your income so you can live properly. This isn't the case in the TW