Another view of Third Worldism and Labor Aristocracy

[Thug Lessons]

Third Worldism is extremely deprecated here, and taken to be an opposing ideology, so I've written this in an attempt to rehabilitate it somewhat. I doubt these words will have a great effect, but perhaps they can ameliorate some of the concerns and clear up some of the misconceptions that revolutionary leftists have about these theories. Perhaps I'm incapable of even that, but at least I can entertain myself. Enjoy.

What is Third Worldism?

Simply put, Third Worldism is an attempt to reconcile Marxism with the events of the twentieth century, particularly the latter half, since history has not proceeded exactly as the Marxists originally envisioned. Despite a continuing expansion of the productive forces and the concentration of capital into fewer and fewer hands, the conditions necessary for a new social order have yet to emerge. Far from triumphing, socialism has been beaten back at every turn. In addition, the so-called “advanced” nations, the First World, have found it possible to provide their citizens with all manner of luxuries that earlier generations could not have dreamed of, both in the form of commodities and social services, apparently giving lie to the Marxists' prediction that capitalism's development would push wages, and thereby the working class's condition, ever downward. And far from destroying the middle class, at least in the First World nations, it has preserved it, expanded it and enriched it.

Third Worldism offers a solution to this apparent problem, namely the theory of Labor Aristocracy. This term was originally applied by Engles to describe the leaders of trade unions who peddled opportunism and collaboration with the bourgeoisie. Third Worldists have expanded this to include all workers who have been bribed into servility. Under this expanded definition, the majority of First World workers can be called labor aristocrats. Bribed by access to goods, services and credit, their material interests appear to come closer into alignment with that of capital, precluding viable revolutionary action in the First World.

But this is not sufficient to described the phenomenon. We have to ask where the labor aristocracy's new-found wealth is coming from. It cannot come from increased productivity, because by all measures the First World nations produce less every year. Nor has capital elected to share in its gains, on the contrary, it demands a greater and greater share, just as it always has. No, the wealth of the labor aristocracy can come from only one source: the Third World, through imperialism. As such, Third Worldists see anti-imperialism as the forefront of the fight against capitalism, and a prerequisite for socialism.

Who are the Third Worldists?

Third Worldist currents have existed in Marxist thought since the 19th century, but they have never risen to much prominence. Some claim Lenin as a Third Worldist based on sections of his 1916 pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, but he, drawing on comments by Engels, identifies only a portion First World workers as members of the labor aristocracy.

Today, Third Worldism is expounded mainly by a few small post-Maoist groups, specifically the practically defunct Maoist International Movement (MIM) and the Maoist-Third Worldists (M-TW), who run the blog Monkey Smashes Heaven and partner with the US anti-imperialist group RAIM. These organizations are not without their flaws, but unfortunately they are the only groups I am aware of developing Third Worldist theory at this time.

There are also a few scattered Marxists sympathetic to Third Worldist theory. Perhaps the most well-known, (if that term is really appropriate), is J. Sakai, author of Settlers, the Mythology of the White Proletariat. There are others, but like Sakai they languish in obscurity.

Who do the Third Worldists support?

Third Worldists support any group struggling against imperialism in the Third World, especially communist groups. This includes but is not limited to the Iraqi and Afghani resistance, Hezbollah in Lebanon, all Palestinian groups opposed to the occupation, India's CPI-Maoist and others. More broadly they support all states that try to take on the imperialists, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Perhaps most controversially, they support Iran in its efforts to acquire nuclear energy. This is not to be construed as supporting the Iranian clergy's domination of the nation's people, but rather an indication that they put anti-imperialism first.

Some boilerplate responses to questions and criticisms of Third Worldism

Q: Is Third Worldism racist?

A: Not at all. It's by historical coincidence that most of the First World's citizens are Caucasian, and racial theory is a load of crap anyway.

Q: Is Third Worldism Marxist?

A: I suppose it doesn't have to be, but it certainly can be. The analyses of MIM and M-TW are based on the labor theory of value.

Q: Which nations belong to the First World and which to the Third?

A: The First World is the “advanced” nations, e.g. the US, Britain, Germany, Japan and so on. However, I am not so sure that the labor aristocracy is truly confined to these countries. Even in Engels's time a portion of the British proletariat was joining the ranks of the labor aristocracy, and I suspect something similar is going on in the upper stratum of middle-income countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Whether these countries can join the ranks of the First World, as South Korea and others have done, remains to be seen.

Q: Is the mere difference in wages between citizens of the First and Third Worlds enough to show exploitation?

A: Of course not, but then again no one is making such a claim. The claims of exploitation are based on a few factors, namely the fact that most First World citizens are not employed in productive labor, the fact that most of the First World's commodities are produced in the Third World, and the undeniable existence of imperialism.

Q: Doesn't Third Worldism leave no room for revolutionary struggle in the First World?

A: Yes and no. While First World revolutionaries have no viable means to organize the working class into a progressive political force, they can certainly engage in other forms of leftist agitation. And regardless of the current potential for revolution, socialism must come to the US, Europe, Japan, etc. eventually, and revolutionary activists lay the groundwork for such a struggle.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Some trainspotting questions. What is the organizational relationship between MTW groups? As I understand MIM is pretty much down to Henry Parks. What happened to Parks? Why did MIM implode, if that's what happened? Would it be accurate to describe Shubel Morgen and MSH as MIM splinters or did they both come from IRTR?

What's behind the anti-sexuality stance of SM and other MTW groups?

Finally, I know MIM was an actual organization, I used to get their paper at a local coffee shop but are these other groups organizations or websites?

[Thug Lessons]

Some trainspotting questions. What is the organizational relationship between MTW groups? As I understand MIM is pretty much down to Henry Parks. What happened to Parks? Why did MIM implode, if that's what happened? Would it be accurate to describe Shubel Morgen as an MIM splinter or did they both come from IRTR?

What's behind the anti-sexuality stance of SM and other MTW groups?

Finally, I know MIM was an actual organization, I used to get their paper at a local coffee shop but are these other groups organizations or websites?
These are difficult for me to answer since I am not officially affiliated with either group, both are very secretive, and I wouldn't give out personal information regardless, but I'll do my best.

I have no idea what happened to MIM. They still run prisoncensorship.info and continue their work with prisons, but beyond that I'm not sure. Presumably most of the people involved lost interest and those that stayed kind of went off the deep end, though MSH's claims about them go even further.

I have no idea where the exact people who run Shubel Morgan came from, but ideologically they've adopted the MSH line, so presumably they were part of the same current.

I'm not sure what you're referring to as to the anti-sexuality stance of M-TW. MIM adopted an Andrea Dworkin/Catherine MacKinnon sort of view on gender relations, claimed all sex was rape, used obnoxious alternate spellings like "womyn" and "humynity", but MSH has repuidiated this. They also recently published an article coming out against puritanism.

RAIM, which is one of MSH's partners, is an actual organization. They stage protests, publish newspapers and conduct agitation, and recently made the news when they attracted the attention of TV personality Michelle Malkin. For a long time MSH had no public organization that I know of, but recently they've put up a statement about what they call the Leading Light Communist Organization, with their first congress being held this year. However, I think it's fair to say that the M-TW movement is not nearly as organized as MIM was at its height. This is probably due to a number of factors, including that they're extremely secretive, their supporters come from many countries as opposed to primarily the US like MIM, and the fact that IRTR/MSH are all of five years old.

[RGacky3]

Third Worldists have expanded this to include all workers who have been bribed into servility. Under this expanded definition, the majority of First World workers can be called labor aristocrats. Bribed by access to goods, services and credit, their material interests appear to come closer into alignment with that of capital, precluding viable revolutionary action in the First World.


See thats the problem, no one was bribed, all of the benefits that the first world workers had were benefits that were taken through struggle.

Its much harderfor thrid worldists to struggle against imperialism, considering the country is far away.

[Thug Lessons]

See thats the problem, no one was bribed, all of the benefits that the first world workers had were benefits that were taken through struggle.

Its much harderfor thrid worldists to struggle against imperialism, considering the country is far away.
Well, I don't necessarily disagree with the first part, but I don't think it changes much. First World workers were willing to accept concessions, in the form of higher wages and better social services, in exchange for abandoning the direct struggle against capitalism and even left-wing politics and labor unions more generally. That's what I mean when I say they were bribed.

I don't quite understand the second part. The imperialist nations may be far away from the oppressed nations, (though not always, because Africa for example is very close to Europe, and Mexico shares a border with the US), but imperialism always takes place within the oppressed nation.

[RGacky3]

First World workers were willing to accept concessions, in the form of higher wages and better social services, in exchange for abandoning the direct struggle against capitalism and even left-wing politics and labor unions more generally. That's what I mean when I say they were bribed.


So are third world workers, second of all, there is no corrolation, in the first world the countries with the best labor gains also generally happend to have the strongest left.


I don't quite understand the second part. The imperialist nations may be far away from the oppressed nations, (though not always, because Africa for example is very close to Europe, and Mexico shares a border with the US), but imperialism always takes place within the oppressed nation.

My point is not the distance, for example for the US to really really exploit its own people, its a little more risky, becuase if they revolted the US has a lot too loose, if the US does it in Mexico, they have less to loose, they might overthrow the local government, but the US can deal with that. Thats what I mean.

[Thug Lessons]

So are third world workers, second of all, there is no corrolation, in the first world the countries with the best labor gains also generally happend to have the strongest left.
Workers in the third world are often revolutionary, there are several revolutionary struggles going on in third world countries at the moment and many more throughout history. Far more than in the first world. They also elect genuinely socialist governments like Chavez's in Venezuela, Morales's in Bolivia and Prachanda's in Nepal, while leftist in the first world are more likely to support parties that are at best social democrats like the Democratic Party or the Labour Party UK.

And in any case, I agree that the countries with the strongest left tend to provide the best support for the poor. This is true the world over, and I never suggested otherwise.


My point is not the distance, for example for the US to really really exploit its own people, its a little more risky, becuase if they revolted the US has a lot too loose, if the US does it in Mexico, they have less to loose, they might overthrow the local government, but the US can deal with that. Thats what I mean.Well are they exploited or not? Make up your mind.

[Thug Lessons]

Here's a good way to look at labor aristocracy.

There are many professional athletes and actors/actresses that earn millions of dollars for their work. But if you want to make a vulgar analysis of their relations of production, you can claim they're exploited. After all, the owners of the sports team make money by having them on the team, so there must be a transfer of surplus value, right? But the problem here is that it's absurd to claim that the value of a sports star's labor is really in the range of millions of dollars, and in fact their earnings should be even higher if they're to get their fair due. Really, once the ball has been finished getting kicked or thrown around, nothing has changed. No value has been created whatsoever. The situation for an actor or actress is a little different, since their labor helps to create a film, but as we've seen in the past couple decades films can be reproduced infinitely and are only given value by copyright laws.

The situation for first world workers is the same. They may not earn millions of dollars for their labor, but they earn more than it's worth, which in many cases is nothing at all.

So, what gives these workers the power to earn so much? Well, most jobs that require genuine production have already been exported to other countries, but certain jobs have to be done within the first world. Also, there is government pressure for companies provide jobs, and decent jobs too, paying at least a decent minimum wage. And they can't just import foreigners to do these jobs, partly because many of them require education, which is most developed in the imperialist nations, and partly because the first world restricts immigration. If these barriers to education and immigration were immediately lifted, workers from the third world would immediately flood the first and the excess supply of labor would quickly force wages downward towards a more realistic level. This realization is the motivating force behind the reactionary anti-immigrant backlashes in the US and Europe. Without the artificial scarcity of labor in the first world created by immigration laws and the artificial lack of education in the third world created by imperialism, today's citizens of the imperialist nations could not maintain their standard of living.

[anticap]

I both agree and disagree with Third Worldists. I agree that the First World (including its proletariat) benefits from the plunder of the Third World. I do not agree that it follows that the First World proletariat has been "bribed" into virtual non-existence. The proletariat is defined by its relationship to the means of production, not by how big its flat-screen TVs are.

Wages are based on the bundle of goods necessary to maintain the standard of living in a given time and place. That bundle of goods is less for a sweatshop worker living in a shanty town than it is for an office worker living in an advanced urban center. This isn't to make excuses for the disparity, which is made possible in part by plunder; but higher First World wages are explained in other terms and do not constitute "bribes" -- and even if they did, it still would not change the relationship of those bribed workers to the means of production.

At minimum, Third Worldists need to drop the line that there is no longer a First World proletariat to speak of. It makes them look ignorant of the most basic and fundamental Marxist premises.

[Thug Lessons]

I both agree and disagree with Third Worldists. I agree that the First World (including its proletariat) benefits from the plunder of the Third World. I do not agree that it follows that the First World proletariat has been "bribed" into virtual non-existence. The proletariat is defined by its relationship to the means of production, not by how big its flat-screen TVs are.

Wages are based on the bundle of goods necessary to maintain the standard of living in a given time and place. That bundle of goods is less for a sweatshop worker living in a shanty town than it is for an office worker living in an advanced urban center. This isn't to make excuses for the disparity, which is made possible in part by plunder; but higher First World wages are explained in other terms and do not constitute "bribes" -- and even if they did, it still would not change the relationship of those bribed workers to the means of production.
I actually don't see any fault here. First world workers do sell their labor in exchange for wages, which is the same relationship with the means of production as any other wage-laborer. The difference is that in most cases, (the exception being the lumpen in prisons and scattered groups of migrant workers, and most likely a few individuals who are illegally paid below the minimum wage), this relationship does not result in a transfer of surplus value from the worker to capital. This should affect our analysis of the class situation in the first world nations.


At minimum, Third Worldists need to drop the line that there is no longer a First World proletariat to speak of. It makes them look ignorant of the most basic and fundamental Marxist premises.
I've had a number of uninteresting discussions about whether first world workers are genuinely proletarian, what terminology to use to refer to them an so on. But whatever you want to call them, they are a labor aristocracy. Perhaps the best solution would be to distinguish a labor aristocracy as a class in itself, based on the definition I provided above, (i.e. a class with proletarian relations to production minus the transfer of surplus value, and all that entails). This is not entirely unprecedented, as Marxists do distinguish between the bourgeoisie proper and the petty bourgeoisie, despite the fact they share the same relationship to production. And historically the petty bourgeoisie has been considered to be revolutionary in the end analysis since their interests were seen as ultimately aligning with those of the proletariat, so the labor aristocracy can be seen as non-revolutionary or counterrevolutionary since their immediate interests align with those of Western capital and imperialism.

[Kotze]

First world workers do sell their labor in exchange for wages, which is the same relationship with the means of production as any other wage-laborer. The difference is that in most cases (...) this relationship does not result in a transfer of surplus value from the worker to capital. How do you know this?

[Thug Lessons]

How do you know this?
Because it's absurd to think that a first world laborer who works as a clerk for minimum wage is slightly more productive than the average Mexican laborer, more than doubly as productive as the average Chinese laborer, and nearly a dozen times more productive than the average Haitian laborer. In fact, all those nations' average worker is more productive than a clerk, because the clerk doesn't produce anything, while those nations produce huge supplies of commodities, or at least agricultural products.

And just so you don't mistake this for nationalism, you could make the same comparison between modern first world workers and first world workers a hundred years ago.

[Sasha]

few questions;

a. wouldnt you say that you are fixating on manual/sweatshop/factory labor as an defining point for who constitute the workingclass. lets take for example me, i work my ass of in an low paid job in an concert venue. am i not part of the working class? isnt saying my relative wealth compared to that of 3th world workers is because i'm directly or indirectly expoiting the 3th world an bit of an academic construct?
my job has no connection what so ever to the 3th world (other than the often quite wealthy african rootsmusic artists i need to run for).

b. where in 3th worldism fits the fact that not only wages but also prices are way higher in the 1st world than in the 3th world?

c. you say you are not nationalist or racist, okay lets accept that for a minute, but wouldnt you say that 3th woldism (seeing that 3th worldists seem to be exclusive from the 1st world) is very orientalist.
following your own reasoning, woudlnt it be more likely that the vast mayority of the 3th worlds proletariat strives only for 1st world standarts of living and wouldnt be intrested in revoltion because of their material conditions?

d. what if this magic 3th world revolution happens somewhere what are they going to do? go on an strike and refusing to produce goods for the fisrt world? only too starve from hunger because the manyfacturors move their production to an non revolutionary country? or is the revolution supposed to be international (wich would be weird considering your agressive support for national liberation movements), and then what polpottist/primitivist style year zero?

[RGacky3]

Workers in the third world are often revolutionary, there are several revolutionary struggles going on in third world countries at the moment and many more throughout history. Far more than in the first world. They also elect genuinely socialist governments like Chavez's in Venezuela, Morales's in Bolivia and Prachanda's in Nepal, while leftist in the first world are more likely to support parties that are at best social democrats like the Democratic Party or the Labour Party UK.

And in any case, I agree that the countries with the strongest left tend to provide the best support for the poor. This is true the world over, and I never suggested otherwise.


THere are more thrid world revolutionary movements because THERES MORE THRID WORLD, Also theres more thrid world revolutionary movements because intelectual control and media control are much much much more intense in first world countries (Capitalists have much more to loose from a first world uprising than a third world, because they can't militarily crush a first world one), Third First world countries capitalism is much more entrenched, formal and institutionalized than third world capitalism.

Workers in the first world support social-democrats because THATS THERE ONLY CHOICE!!!!


Well are they exploited or not? Make up your mind.

Yes they are. Profit is made in the first world too.

[Thug Lessons]

a. wouldnt you say that you are fixating on manual/sweatshop/factory labor as an defining point for who constitute the workingclass. lets take for example me, i work my ass of in an low paid job in an concert venue. am i not part of the working class? isnt saying my relative wealth compared to that of 3th world workers is because i'm directly or indirectly expoiting the 3th world an bit of an academic construct?
my job has no connection what so ever to the 3th world (other than the often quite wealthy african rootsmusic artists i need to run for).
In a Marxist analysis, you are not producing any value because your labor is not productive labor. Presumably your employer makes his profits by charging entrance fees, in which case the perceived value is actually an illusion created by a monopoly ownership of that particular venue. Perhaps the business also makes money off of selling drinks, refreshments and merchandise, which is also non-productive as those commodities were produced elsewhere by others. However, this is a somewhat academic analysis, and I wouldn't say that employment in direct production and transportation of commodities is necessary for proletarian status.

But the connection with imperialism is much more concrete. Without imperialism to drive up the standard of living in your country it would not be possible to sustain your level of wages, or perhaps to support your concert venue as a business at all. Your work may not exploit the third world, and in fact most of jobs in the imperialist nations probably do not involve direct exploitation, but it is supported by the wages of those that do. Can this be termed exploitation? I suppose that is academic. But the consequences of this relationship with imperialism are not.


b. where in 3th worldism fits the fact that not only wages but also prices are way higher in the 1st world than in the 3th world?Third worldists calculate wages in terms of Purchasing Power Parity, a monetary measurement system that compensates for relative differences in prices between nations. Wage differences remain, and third worlders are, like everyone with two eyes can recognize, much poorer than first worlders.

MSH has also published articles on this:
http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/again-on-the-high-cost-of-living-in-the-third-world/


c. you say you are not nationalist or racist, okay lets accept that for a minute, but wouldnt you say that 3th woldism (seeing that 3th worldists seem to be exclusive from the 1st world) is very orientalist.Where are you getting this? MIM was primarily a US organization, and RAIM is a purely US organization, but the M-TWs have repeatedly said they have members in many countries, some of them third world, some of them first world. And they've put this into action, re-publishing many articles in Spanish, Tagalog, Czech and other languages.

But more fundamentally, why is it racist, nationalist or orientalist for a first worlder to support the third world? If anything it's nationalist to claim they should be supporting their own country even though they believe their country is wrong.


following your own reasoning, woudlnt it be more likely that the vast mayority of the 3th worlds proletariat strives only for 1st world standarts of living and wouldnt be intrested in revoltion because of their material conditions?This is exactly why third worldism needs to exist: to tell people that this is impossible. Since the wealth of the first world is based on exploitation, not greater productivity or development, there is no viable path for the masses to reach parity with the first world based on capitalist/imperialist development.


d. what if this magic 3th world revolution happens somewhere what are they going to do? go on an strike and refusing to produce goods for the fisrt world? only too starve from hunger because the manyfacturors move their production to an non revolutionary country? or is the revolution supposed to be international (wich would be weird considering your agressive support for national liberation movements), and then what polpottist/primitivist style year zero?Why does a revolution have to be magical? They happen all the time!

All Marxists, including Third Worldist Marxists, oppose capitalist development. They believe that all nations should follow a development course similar to those first established by the USSR, Maoist China and elsewhere. As far as the specific trade policies with the first world go, this would have to be decided on a country-by-country basis, but generally the goal is to end the transfer of wealth from the third world to the first. This might be accomplished by anything from restructuring of current trade rules to total embargo depending on the situation.

[Sasha]

In a Marxist analysis, you are not producing any value because your labor is not productive labor. Presumably your employer makes his profits by charging entrance fees, in which case the perceived value is actually an illusion created by a monopoly ownership of that particular venue. Perhaps the business also makes money off of selling drinks, refreshments and merchandise, which is also non-productive as those commodities were produced elsewhere by others.

well actualy we are an non-profit foundation, the "boss" gets an (admititly significant higher) wage just like us.
wich seems irrelavant anyway to the discussion but kind of isnt at the same time. for me situations like this prove that orthodox marxism/marxism as an economic/scientific theory is false, hence why i'm not an marxist.

and while i agree its noway fair that we exploit the 3th world and that should stop asap i dont believe 3rd worldism is the answer.
we should celebrate the gains that humanity made and get everybody on that or an higher standard not dropping the 1st world to the level of the 3rd as some MSH wacko's seem to argue.
so yeah, i will take anarcho-transhumanism reached through autonomism anytime over 3rd worldism

[Thug Lessons]

well actualy we are an non-profit foundation, the "boss" gets an (admititly significant higher) wage just like us.
wich seems irrelavant anyway to the discussion but kind of isnt at the same time. for me situations like this prove that orthodox marxism/marxism as an economic/scientific theory is false, hence why i'm not an marxist.
Yes, the non-profit situation changes things, though not as much as you might think. And yes, that discussion as well as the discussion of Marxism's validity aren't quite relevant here and belong in another thread.

However, I am curious as to what exactly you object to there. Is it just the disconnect due to the non-profit nature of your employer, or do you think the problem runs deeper. There's a couple things I failed to point out in my last post, firstly that the non-productive nature of your work doesn't negate your relationship to capital. You still live as a wage-laborer who sells his labor-power for wages, and as such are a worker, (MSH would disagree with me here I believe). Also, every society is bound to have some number of non-productive laborers and no reasonable interpretation of Marxism condemns these based on their non-productive status alone.


and while i agree its noway fair that we exploit the 3th world and that should stop asap i dont believe 3rd worldism is the answer.
Well make sure you don't admit that first world workers benefit at all from this exploitation, or else they'll throw you in here with me!


we should celebrate the gains that humanity made and get everybody on that or an higher standard not dropping the 1st world to the level of the 3rd as some MSH wacko's seem to argue.
Well, this is where it gets complicated. Really, the objective for Third Worldists is to raise up the third world. However, class analysis shows that first world laborers are exploiters, and we shouldn't tolerate exploitation as a means to maintain their standard of living.

MSH has this crazy idea that third world countries are going to invade the first world and establish a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Exploited Nations, (JDPEN), which is nonsensical to me since the first world has nuclear weapons. In the long run, I think what has to happen is for the third world to throw off imperialism and concetrate their resources on domestic development, which will end up impoverishing the first world and lead to communist revolution eventually. This doesn't technically contradict the MSH line, but they think it's unlikely for reasons I don't quite understand. I'm probably going to write them a letter fairly so that addresses some of these objections I have.


so yeah, i will take anarcho-transhumanism reached through autonomism anytime over 3rd worldism
I'm sure anyone would if they saw these as realistic options, but both anarchism and transhumanism are pie-in-the-sky fantasies that have no material basis.

[turquino]

I think ‘Thug Lessons’ makes some sound points. If we take value to be the measure of a claim on the social product that we call wages, profits, interest, rent etc., it seems reasonable to assume that there are cases when a wage could contain more value than the amount its worker donates. I don’t think it would be controversial here to suggest some salaries in the financial services industry fall under that category. If the wages of a nation’s working class contain surplus value created by other workers so that they are no longer net donators of value, but rather recipients, then this becomes an objective barrier to international solidarity. At this point, struggling for the relative share of the nation’s capitalists is less advantageous than expanding the absolute share extracted from the exploitation of other nations.

[Kotze]

I agree that it is in most cases absurd to say that person A in a rich country having 3 times or more the wage of person B in a poor country is the result of differences in talent or effort. But does it follow that A exploits B?

Suppose we look at 2 companies, both produce the same thing. Person A works in a hi-tech company; equally talented person B works in a lo-tech company. Because of the difference in technology, B has to work longer than A to produce the same quantity. Does that mean A exploits B?

The capitalist needs the workers to produce stuff. If the capitalist has a heart attack, the factors of production he "contributed" to use mainstream jargon, that is the building, the machines, the land (isn't it nice of him that he contributed the land, lol), are all still there. If the workers get food poisoning from the factory canteen, production is interrupted. The workers are more important than the capitalist for producing stuff. Capitalists need workers. But do the people in the hi-tech company need the people in the lo-tech company?

[S.Artesian]

First and foremost, the US and UK wage structures, along with that of the Netherlands and other low countries were historically and significantly higher than in other countries of Europe, not to mention Asia or Latin America back in the 17th and 18th centuries, well before industrial capitalism itself established its hegemony, not to mention leading to finance capital which is supposedly the "birthmark" of imperialism.

Secondly, the bulk of industrial production, and profits, and profitably is still centered in the "advanced" countries of Europe, North America, Australia, Japan-- and we can throw in South Korea which was awarded "advanced" status by OECD in 2008.

Thirdly, in the US 2/3 of non-banking profits are derived from domestic operations. Of the other 1/3, 80 percent is derived from operations in the advanced countries of Europe, from Japan, from Canada, Australia... the advanced countries.

Fourthly, rates of value-added production, the bourgeoisie's way of accounting for the exploitation of labor are higher in the US for US manufacturing than in the other advanced countries.

Fifthly, has anyone been paying attention to what has happened over the last 35 years-- with the decimation of the industrial working class in the US? With the devastation of rural manufacturing/farm centers? With the dramatic decline in real wages in food processing, meat-packing, construction.. etc? This entire notion of "bribery,"-- which was never accurate-- is so at variance with reality as to be practically psychotic.

Sixth-- revolutions and revolutionary struggle are triggered by the conflict between the means and relations of production. The success of those struggles has certainly been no greater in "3rd world" countries than in the advanced countries.

Morales, in Bolivia, is not a revolutionary, nor is the MAS, unless of course you happen to consider providing troops to the UN occupation of Haiti to be a revolutionary undertaking.

Chavez may consider himself to be a revolutionary, but the success of the struggle in Venezuela depends on expropriating the bourgeoisie, overturning class relations and Chavez's government cannot and will not accomplish such overturning.

[Kayser_Soso]

Your forgot an important question:

Q. Where can one find Third Worldists?

A. Look in the First World. The more privileged their background, the more militant they are.

The thing is that Third Worldism throws Marxism out the window. Exploitation is exploitation. It doesn't matter if you work in a service industry. Tens of millions of people from the Third World are involved in service industries as well- are they not exploited? Third Worldism is just an excuse for wannabe militants in First world countries not to do anything.

[Thug Lessons]

Sorry it took so long to respond. I've been busy, plus this poster raised a number of substantial, (if not necessarily good), criticisms of third worldism and deserved a serious response.


First and foremost, the US and UK wage structures, along with that of the Netherlands and other low countries were historically and significantly higher than in other countries of Europe, not to mention Asia or Latin America back in the 17th and 18th centuries, well before industrial capitalism itself established its hegemony, not to mention leading to finance capital which is supposedly the "birthmark" of imperialism.
This can be seen as the result of colonialism. International exploitation doesn't have to take the form described by Lenin in Imperialism. The Roman Empire enriched itself through the conquest of territories, the Spanish Empire was built on gold and slavery in the New World, and the US and British Empires owe their existence to ruthless and brutal occupation and settlement of various colonies.


Secondly, the bulk of industrial production, and profits, and profitably is still centered in the "advanced" countries of Europe, North America, Australia, Japan-- and we can throw in South Korea which was awarded "advanced" status by OECD in 2008.
Where are you getting these numbers? According to the CIA World Factbook, the US and EU both have a GDP of around $14 trillion, with 21.9% and 25.2% of that coming from industry, for a total of around $6.6 trillion in industrial production. But just the top five third world economies, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, have a combined industrial GDP that equals this, (minus about $50 million). And yes, I am ignoring a few first world economies, but I'm also ignoring scores of third world economies, as well the much larger and more productive agricultural sectors in the third world. Agriculture makes up <2% of GDP in the US and EU, while it's in the double digits in all those other countries I mentioned.

But this analysis ignores something to begin with, namely that industrial production in the first world is not treated the same as that of the third world. When goods are produced in the third world, often they are sold to the first world at low prices, where they are either processed and sold for high prices or sold directly by retailers for high prices. Industrial products produced in the first world are usually sold domestically or within the first world to retailers for high prices who then sell them for even higher prices. This is partly a response to this objection as well as your fourth, which I'll address in full below.


Thirdly, in the US 2/3 of non-banking profits are derived from domestic operations. Of the other 1/3, 80 percent is derived from operations in the advanced countries of Europe, from Japan, from Canada, Australia... the advanced countries.
There's a few ways to address this. The first is wealth derived from historical colonial and semi-colonial exploitation has not just disappeared. An immense supply of capital has been built up over centuries of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, which provides the base for the US economy. But the picture is different when it comes to new wealth, in the form of new commodities Chinese imports alone easily outweighs domestic production and imports from all other first world countries combined, and from proceeds on foreign direct investment, where worldwide the flow, (though not volume), to third world countries is greatest.


Fourthly, rates of value-added production, the bourgeoisie's way of accounting for the exploitation of labor are higher in the US for US manufacturing than in the other advanced countries.
This is because bourgeois economic statistics, especially those relating to productivity, are garbage. Only a metric based on the Labor Theory of Value can give a proper accounting of exploitation.

Still, in any case, this is pointless. The third worldist conception of economics cannot be proven or refuted by referring to a few simple statistics. A full inventory, considering dozens of factors and all major countries, is required to fully explain what's going on. As far as I know, neither side of the debate has produced such a document. I'd like to do so myself, but I'm not sure if I'm up to it and besides that's far too much work for a forums post.

But I have to ask you something: do you really think that the first world isn't exploiting the third? That seems like a fairly controversial opinion on the left. In these points you've been presenting, the aim seems to be to disprove any notion that the first world relies on the third world for its profits. Does that really match up with the facts? To most people on the left exploitation of the third world is taken for granted, and even among first world citizens in general it's widely acknowledged that we rely on the third world for commodity production. But if that's not the case, what is happening? Is there no flow of value between the advanced and 'backward' nations? That seems hard to believe in the era of globalization. Or is the first world actually enriching the third? That seems equally unlikely.


Fifthly, has anyone been paying attention to what has happened over the last 35 years-- with the decimation of the industrial working class in the US? With the devastation of rural manufacturing/farm centers? With the dramatic decline in real wages in food processing, meat-packing, construction.. etc? This entire notion of "bribery,"-- which was never accurate-- is so at variance with reality as to be practically psychotic.
All of this is neither here nor there. While certain industries may have suffered over the last few decades, on the whole wages and social benefits have been, at worst, stable over that peroid. There has been no decimation of the working class and to suggest that there was is absurd.


Sixth-- revolutions and revolutionary struggle are triggered by the conflict between the means and relations of production. The success of those struggles has certainly been no greater in "3rd world" countries than in the advanced countries.

Morales, in Bolivia, is not a revolutionary, nor is the MAS, unless of course you happen to consider providing troops to the UN occupation of Haiti to be a revolutionary undertaking.

Chavez may consider himself to be a revolutionary, but the success of the struggle in Venezuela depends on expropriating the bourgeoisie, overturning class relations and Chavez's government cannot and will not accomplish such overturning.
I'm skeptical of the prospects of Chavez and Morales as well, but they're certainly better than any 'leftist' rulers in the first world. And besides, I wouldn't point to them as examples of the best third world revolutionaries, but rather Lenin, Stalin and Mao, as well as any of the leaders of the many communist governments that have sprung up over the 20th century, all of them in the third world. As far as contemporary groups go, I'm fairly impressed by India's Naxalites (CPI-Maoist).

[Thug Lessons]

Your forgot an important question:

Q. Where can one find Third Worldists?

A. Look in the First World. The more privileged their background, the more militant they are.

I've seen no proof of this, but feel free to offer some if you have it.

But more importantly, this is racist garbage and you should be ashamed for peddling it. Who gives a damn which countries third worldists come from? Only people who buy into national chauvinism, or are at least willing to rely on it in place of a real argument. Then again, I'm not sure I can blame you there, because there are no good arguments against third worldism and if you reject it you've got to try something.


The thing is that Third Worldism throws Marxism out the window. Exploitation is exploitation. It doesn't matter if you work in a service industry. Tens of millions of people from the Third World are involved in service industries as well- are they not exploited? Third Worldism is just an excuse for wannabe militants in First world countries not to do anything.
Being employed in a service industry does not mean you're an exploiter. But when entire nations liquidate their manufacturing and send it overseas, those nations become the exploiters of the whole world. There are bound to be some service or non-productive employment in all economies, but the sitaution in the US and rest of the first world is that you have massive numbers of non-productive workers for each productive worker, while the third world picks up the slack.

[S.Artesian]

I

Being employed in a service industry does not mean you're an exploiter. But when entire nations liquidate their manufacturing and send it overseas, those nations become the exploiters of the whole world. There are bound to be some service or non-productive employment in all economies, but the sitaution in the US and rest of the first world is that you have massive numbers of non-productive workers for each productive worker, while the third world picks up the slack.

What "entire nations" have liquidated their manufacturing and sent it overseas? And what "benefit," "privilege," "bribery" has accrued to the the US working class with the increased offshoring?

The answers are: none and none.

US accounts for app 1/5 of global industrial output. Germany? Largest exporter of capital machinery, so it's hardly dependent on "super-exploitation" of workers in the less developed countries? The UK? Right tell all those sacked British workers, and all those service workers who are having their wages reduced how they're being "subsidized" by the "third world."

Has anyone been paying attention to what's been going on in the global economy since 1973? 1980? 2001? 2008? Yesterday?

[Thug Lessons]

What "entire nations" have liquidated their manufacturing and sent it overseas? And what "benefit," "privilege," "bribery" has accrued to the the US working class with the increased offshoring?

The answers are: none and none.

US accounts for app 1/5 of global industrial output. Germany? Largest exporter of capital machinery, so it's hardly dependent on "super-exploitation" of workers in the less developed countries? The UK? Right tell all those sacked British workers, and all those service workers who are having their wages reduced how they're being "subsidized" by the "third world."

Has anyone been paying attention to what's been going on in the global economy since 1973? 1980? 2001? 2008? Yesterday?I addressed most of this in my reply to your previous post which you've ignored, but I'll try to explain it again in a more concise manner.

First, I'd like to see where you're getting these numbers. I'm not sure they match up with mine and you may be overestimating the industrial output of the first world.

But now, let's be clear. When you say that the US accounts for 1/5 of the world's industrial production, what you really mean is that US industry makes 1/5 of all the money spent on industrial products. In terms of labor, industry is overwhelmingly concentrated in the third world. According to this report (http://www.usc.es/%7Eeconomet/reviews/eers612.pdf), less than 1% of the US's population was actually employed in industry as of 2005, with similar rates for European countries. In none of them did industry employ more than 1.5% of the population. (EDIT: Current US labor statistic say differently, with about 6% (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm) of workers employed in industry, but this doesn't affect my point.) So even if we were to accept your explanation, this doesn't change the situation for most first world citizens, as only a tiny minority of them are actually employed in industry, let alone manufacturing. This is not the case in the third world, where most countries have a larger industrial proletariat. It was about 12% (http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/China_book/App_D_tables/TableD.3.pdf) in China as of 1995, with another 25% employed in agriculture (those are the most recent numbers I can find, but if anything it's increased over the last 15 years). Also note that China is more populous than the US and Europe combined.

The US and Europe might seem like huge industrial producers based on GDP percentage statistics, but they're not. First world industry is a small sector that produces extremely expensive products, while third world industry is a huge sector that produces extremely cheap products, and this accounts for most of the disparity you're bringing up here. I examined this more fully in my last post.

As far as the situation for first world workers under globalization, you have some crazy ideas. Things have not been getting much worse over the last 30 years. Wages, at least in the US, are nearly unchanged since 1980. Some areas have degraded, like the scope and effectiveness of welfare programs, while others have improved, like prevalence of post-secondary education, but on the balance things are about the same. You like to pick out specific industries and situation that have been bad for workers, and god knows there's plenty of them, but there have been just as many successes, which is why US wages remain fairly high.

You do bring up one important point though -- post-1980 globalization has not increased the wealth of first world workers. They are not being bribed with higher and higher wages, they are getting the same wages they did 30 years ago, which were high to begin with. The recent wave of offshoring has not shown them any benefit. However, it also hasn't shown them much loss, since other industries have compensated for vanishing job opportunities in manufacturing.

[S.Artesian]

Sorry it took so long to respond. I've been busy, plus this poster raised a number of substantial, (if not necessarily good), criticisms of third worldism and deserved a serious response.


This can be seen as the result of colonialism. International exploitation doesn't have to take the form described by Lenin in Imperialism. The Roman Empire enriched itself through the conquest of territories, the Spanish Empire was built on gold and slavery in the New World, and the US and British Empires owe their existence to ruthless and brutal occupation and settlement of various colonies.

Didn't see this reply. Those things happen.

The high wage structure in the UK precedes Britain's colonial expansion. See Robert C. Allen's The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.

The higher wage structure in the US precedes the expansion of the slave economy into the era of "king cotton." Moreover, US industrial penetration of Mexico begins during that period known as the "long deflation," marked by several severe contractions and declines in US wages, so it's pretty hard to find any correlation between high wages and degree of colonialism.

Yes, the Spanish Empire was built on conquest and extraction in the New World. No Spain did not become an industrial power. All that imperial extraction hardly benefited the Spanish working class.



Where are you getting these numbers? According to the CIA World Factbook, the US and EU both have a GDP of around $14 trillion, with 21.9% and 25.2% of that coming from industry, for a total of around $6.6 trillion in industrial production. But just the top five third world economies, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, have a combined industrial GDP that equals this, (minus about $50 million). And yes, I am ignoring a few first world economies, but I'm also ignoring scores of third world economies, as well the much larger and more productive agricultural sectors in the third world. Agriculture makes up <2% of GDP in the US and EU, while it's in the double digits in all those other countries I mentioned.

Where are you getting your numbers? Mine come from the US BEA, the Statistical Abstract of the US, the FRB. And are you kidding me about agricultural sector productivity? China has about 350 million workers tied to agricultural production, with per capita productivity so far below that of the US and EU it's painful. Average agricultural unit size per worker in China is less than an acre. In the US 194 acres/worker. India? Not even worth mentioning. Brazil? Brazil has sectors of high agricultural productivity [as does Bolivia], sectors that are hampered by the poor conditions and higher costs of transport in Brazil.

You can check my statistics on agriculture at the USDA Economic Research Service.

We are talking about productivity; about value output per labor input. That's how capitalism measures, judges, defines itself, its "progress." So when you tell me that US and the EU have industrial outputs equal to 6.6 trillion-- that's 6.6 trillion per 750 million people. When you tell me that India, China, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, you're telling me that 2.7 billion people produce about the same amount in industrial output.

When you're telling me that China or Brazil have larger agricultural components of their GDP, with more of the population engaged in agricultural production, you're telling me the opposite of what you think it means. It means those economies are less productive, not more productive.

But there's no argument that capital isn't an international system and capitalism seeks every opportunity to maximize profit by taking advantage of lower wage rates in less developed countries. It is.

The argument is-- whether workers in advanced countries are bribed, or benefit from this. The argument is whether this makes less developed countries, as less developed countries, are now the fulcrum for revolution.



But this analysis ignores something to begin with, namely that industrial production in the first world is not treated the same as that of the third world. When goods are produced in the third world, often they are sold to the first world at low prices, where they are either processed and sold for high prices or sold directly by retailers for high prices. Industrial products produced in the first world are usually sold domestically or within the first world to retailers for high prices who then sell them for even higher prices. This is partly a response to this objection as well as your fourth, which I'll address in full below.


Yes indeed when goods are produced in the third world, they are produced at low prices, low value added, in labor-intensive operations. That's what maquiladoras are, and China has the world's largest maquiladora in the Guangdong.



Yes, a developed country by the very fact of its development provides a greater domestic market for its industrial output. However, doesn't stop Germany from being the largest exporter of capital goods, nor the US from being the #3,or 4, or 5, largest exporter [at least in 2007].




There's a few ways to address this. The first is wealth derived from historical colonial and semi-colonial exploitation has not just disappeared. An immense supply of capital has been built up over centuries of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, which provides the base for the US economy.

Can you quantify this please? How much of the "built up" "stored" capital in the US is due to the accumulation from the era of slavery? How much is due to "imperialism"? Can you quantify these amounts for Britain?


But the picture is different when it comes to new wealth, in the form of new commodities Chinese imports alone easily outweighs domestic production and imports from all other first world countries combined, and from proceeds on foreign direct investment, where worldwide the flow, (though not volume), to third world countries is greatest.

What do you mean by new wealth? The profits the bourgeoisie are generating since 1980? Where are you getting your figures for the value of imports from China alone vs "domestic production and imports from all first world countries." In 2008, the US imported about $338 billion from China, which is less than it imported from Canada. So exactly what are you talking about?


This is because bourgeois economic statistics, especially those relating to productivity, are garbage. Only a metric based on the Labor Theory of Value can give a proper accounting of exploitation.

Again, what are you talking about? At one and the same time you claim statistics back your claims while now saying only stats based on LTV are worthwhile.

Let's be clear, the LTV is the basis for capitalist statistics just as it is the basis for capitalist profit. That doesn't mean that the bourgeoisie recognize that, or provide for an LTV method of accounting. It does mean that their measures of capital, of profitability, of value production reflect the underlying social basis for that value production which is the exchange between wage-labor and capital.


Still, in any case, this is pointless. The third worldist conception of economics cannot be proven or refuted by referring to a few simple statistics. A full inventory, considering dozens of factors and all major countries, is required to fully explain what's going on. As far as I know, neither side of the debate has produced such a document. I'd like to do so myself, but I'm not sure if I'm up to it and besides that's far too much work for a forums post.

So then on what basis can you make your claims? And why make your claims? Because you feel you might be right? The available evidence refutes your claims


But I have to ask you something: do you really think that the first world isn't exploiting the third? That seems like a fairly controversial opinion on the left. In these points you've been presenting, the aim seems to be to disprove any notion that the first world relies on the third world for its profits. Does that really match up with the facts? To most people on the left exploitation of the third world is taken for granted, and even among first world citizens in general it's widely acknowledged that we rely on the third world for commodity production. But if that's not the case, what is happening? Is there no flow of value between the advanced and 'backward' nations? That seems hard to believe in the era of globalization. Or is the first world actually enriching the third? That seems equally unlikely.

I think the bourgeoisie exploit everything they can. Do I think the bourgeoisie of the advanced countries have exploited labor in the less developed countries. Absolutely. Do I think such exploitation takes particularly brutal forms in less developed countries? Absolutely. Does that make the advanced countries "dependent" upon the less advanced countries for the bulk of their profits? No. Does that make the developed countries dependent upon "non-capitalist" markets in the less developed countries in order to offset overproduction [a la Rosa Luxemburg]? No. Does that make less advanced countries "revolutionary" "radical" simply by their status as less advanced? No.


Are the bourgeoisie of the advanced countries enriching the less developed countries? Not hardly. Not in general. They certainly have enriched the bourgeoisie of these less advanced countries. As in South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore... and China and Brazil



All of this is neither here nor there. While certain industries may have suffered over the last few decades, on the whole wages and social benefits have been, at worst, stable over that peroid. There has been no decimation of the working class and to suggest that there was is absurd.

Now I recommend you look at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on employment in industrial production in the US; average wages in industrial production; average wages in construction; numbers of workers; and look at rates of children being born into poverty. Check the period from 1945-1970 and compare those rates, and rates of growth with the periods 1973-1980;1980-1992; 1994-2001; 2001-2008.

The US working class has had the snot kicked out of it, across the board. That's what asset stripping, off-shoring, LBOs, do.

Stable over that period? 8% of private sector employees are now unionized in the US, down from around 18-20% in 1970. Here's something to keep in mind: when GM faced a strike in 2007, it was facing a strike of 70,000 workers. In 1970, it faced a strike of 400,000 workers.

[S.Artesian]

I addressed most of this in my reply to your previous post which you've ignored, but I'll try to explain it again in a more concise manner.

First, I'd like to see where you're getting these numbers. I'm not sure they match up with mine and you may be overestimating the industrial output of the first world.

But now, let's be clear. When you say that the US accounts for 1/5 of the world's industrial production, what you really mean is that US industry makes 1/5 of all the money spent on industrial products. In terms of labor, industry is overwhelmingly concentrated in the third world. According to this report (http://www.usc.es/%7Eeconomet/reviews/eers612.pdf), less than 1% of the US's population was actually employed in industry as of 2005, with similar rates for European countries. In none of them did industry employ more than 1.5% of the population. (EDIT: Current US labor statistic say differently, with about 6% (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm) of workers employed in industry, but this doesn't affect my point.) So even if we were to accept your explanation, this doesn't change the situation for most first world citizens, as only a tiny minority of them are actually employed in industry, let alone manufacturing. This is not the case in the third world, where most countries have a larger industrial proletariat. It was about 12% (http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/China_book/App_D_tables/TableD.3.pdf) in China as of 1995, with another 25% employed in agriculture (those are the most recent numbers I can find, but if anything it's increased over the last 15 years). Also note that China is more populous than the US and Europe combined.

Again, you seem totally oblivious to the crucial measure of capitalist development and value, that is productivity. What is the basis of capitalist development? The increased aggrandizement of surplus value. How is this accomplished? Through changing the proportions between necessary labor-time and surplus-labor time, reducing the former to increase the latter-- through the amplification of the productivity of labor, which is exactly why and how the US only has 2% of its population engaged in agriculture.


The US and Europe might seem like huge industrial producers based on GDP percentage statistics, but they're not. First world industry is a small sector that produces extremely expensive products, while third world industry is a huge sector that produces extremely cheap products, and this accounts for most of the disparity you're bringing up here. I examined this more fully in my last post.

Again, this is the result of greater productivity of labor, of the reduced necessary labor time vs. surplus labor time in the advanced countries; and of the overwhelming technical component in the production process.


As far as the situation for first world workers under globalization, you have some crazy ideas. Things have not been getting much worse over the last 30 years. Wages, at least in the US, are nearly unchanged since 1980. Some areas have degraded, like the scope and effectiveness of welfare programs, while others have improved, like prevalence of post-secondary education, but on the balance things are about the same. You like to pick out specific industries and situation that have been bad for workers, and god knows there's plenty of them, but there have been just as many successes, which is why US wages remain fairly high.

Compare the average US production wage to that of workers in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands for 1955, 65, 75, 85, 95, 2005. Look at the transfer of wealth up the social ladder in the US. Compare the portion of national income distributed among the 5 quintiles in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000-2009. Tell me again how things are stable in the US.



You do bring up one important point though -- post-1980 globalization has not increased the wealth of first world workers. They are not being bribed with higher and higher wages, they are getting the same wages they did 30 years ago, which were high to begin with. The recent wave of offshoring has not shown them any benefit. However, it also hasn't shown them much loss, since other industries have compensated for vanishing job opportunities in manufacturing.[/QUOTE]

[Thug Lessons]

I generally dislike line-by-line replies, and they're especially bad when you're working with huge walls of text like this, so I'm going to trim it down to what I consider the most relevant points. If I ignore anything important, make sure to let me know.


The high wage structure in the UK precedes Britain's colonial expansion. See Robert C. Allen's The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.

The higher wage structure in the US precedes the expansion of the slave economy into the era of "king cotton."
Thanks, that book looks interesting and it's freely available online. I'll try to read the whole thing when I get a chance.

Now, I read the relevant section, and the author talks a little bit about how trade in the pre-colonial period set English wages higher than the standard of Europe. But then he immediately takes on imperialism, which he also sees as creating growth in English wages. It seems your own source refutes your argument. As for the US, high wages can be explained in terms of settlerism. Land was scarce in Europe, and colonists had a huge advantage over those in the Old World since they could appropriate as much as they needed from the natives.


Where are you getting your numbers? Mine come from the US BEA, the Statistical Abstract of the US, the FRB.
Do these sources use PPP? Mine, the CIA World Factbook, does. You seem fairly knowledgeable about economics, so you should know that PPP is a much better measurement of national wealth than traditional GDP, and if your sources don't use it that would account for the discrepancy between your statistics and mine.


And are you kidding me about agricultural sector productivity? China has about 350 million workers tied to agricultural production, with per capita productivity so far below that of the US and EU it's painful. Average agricultural unit size per worker in China is less than an acre.By citing those statistics I wasn't attempting to claim that a Chinese farmer was more productive than a US or European farmer. Obviously mechanization and nitrogen fertilizers make agriculture much more productive in the first world. It's one of the few, if not the only, situation where the West's advanced technology translates into vastly increased productivity.

However, third world farmers are still productive. If we limit these calculations we're doing to industrial output, then it makes the West look more productive than it is because, despite the advanced agricultural sector, it produces relatively few agricultural products. Whatever the productivity of third world farmers, agriculture usually makes up a large portion of the economy, and deserves to be considered as well.


Can you quantify this please? How much of the "built up" "stored" capital in the US is due to the accumulation from the era of slavery? How much is due to "imperialism"? Can you quantify these amounts for Britain?You know full well I don't have those figures sitting in front of me and that it would take months, or more likely years of research to collect them. Then again, I'm equally sure that you don't have anything to show that all, or even a majority of the first world's wealth through history comes from domestic production or production in other first world countries.

A full accounting of imperialism is necessary. The fact that none is available is not a stroke against third worldism. It may make it less believable for you, but your own lack of statistics has a similar effect on me.


What do you mean by new wealth? The profits the bourgeoisie are generating since 1980? Where are you getting your figures for the value of imports from China alone vs "domestic production and imports from all first world countries." In 2008, the US imported about $338 billion from China, which is less than it imported from Canada. So exactly what are you talking about?
You're incorrect about this. In 2008 imports from China and Canada were of a similar value, but China's was still higher (source (http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/top/top0812yr.html)). In 2009 and as of June 2010 it was much higher. Canada is the US's largest trade partner overall, but that's because the US exports much more to Canada than China.


Again, what are you talking about? At one and the same time you claim statistics back your claims while now saying only stats based on LTV are worthwhile.
This is important. All bourgeois economic statistics are flawed. They are arbitrary and make all efforts to disguise value. However, despite their flaws, they're the dominant, and essentially the only statistical means we have to evaluate economics, and so we have to use them to make sense of anything. In many cases they are so flawed as to be useless, (as with productivity), but in other cases their flaws aren't so great as to totally obscure the truth. GDP(PPP), for example, can measure the wealth of nations with an acceptable degree of accuracy, and though it's not the last word it is sufficient to prove my point.

As to productivity specifically, as far as I can tell it's a measurement of how effective a worker is at creating profits for capital. I see no reason to take the bourgeois economists at their word that this is anything like a genuine accounting of productivity or the creation of value.


So then on what basis can you make your claims? And why make your claims? Because you feel you might be right? The available evidence refutes your claims
It's obvious to me. Imperialist nations exploit the entire world, and that seems like a much more likely explanation for wage disparity than increased productivity. I'm still learning, and I may change my views in the future, but the evidence that you and other first worldists have presented so far has been quite uncompelling. Mostly it consists of attempting to poke holes in third worldist theory while completely ignoring their responsibility to show that first world workers really are incredibly productive. That they take on faith.


Now I recommend you look at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on employment in industrial production in the US; average wages in industrial production; average wages in construction; numbers of workers; and look at rates of children being born into poverty. Check the period from 1945-1970 and compare those rates, and rates of growth with the periods 1973-1980;1980-1992; 1994-2001; 2001-2008.
Yes, I suppose if you ignore the service sector, which makes up the majority of the US economy both in monetary and employment terms and has for some time, then things look pretty bad for the American worker. But that makes no sense, and the only reason you'd want to do it is to deliberately make things out to be worse than they are. Instead of looking at industrial wages, look at average household income, which is a much better measure. You'll see it's fairly stable. Instead of employment in industrial production, look at unemployment. Again, stable. Instead of number of children in poverty, an absolute metric, look at poverty rate, a relative metric. Stable.

You're cherry-picking irrelevant statistics, and it's not gonna fly.


Stable over that period? 8% of private sector employees are now unionized in the US, down from around 18-20% in 1970. Here's something to keep in mind: when GM faced a strike in 2007, it was facing a strike of 70,000 workers. In 1970, it faced a strike of 400,000 workers.
If anything, the decline in unionization supports third worldist theory, because it shows that first world workers no longer see organizing as necessary. You could argue that it was more about capitalist opposition than worker apathy, which is true to an extent, but union-busting is, if anything, much more subdued than in earlier eras when owners could openly use force against strikers and organizers.


Again, you seem totally oblivious to the crucial measure of capitalist development and value, that is productivity. What is the basis of capitalist development? The increased aggrandizement of surplus value. How is this accomplished? Through changing the proportions between necessary labor-time and surplus-labor time, reducing the former to increase the latter-- through the amplification of the productivity of labor, which is exactly why and how the US only has 2% of its population engaged in agriculture.
Well, I'll acknowledge that advanced technology has made US agriculture more productive, but not as much as you might expect. With only 2% of the population engaged in it, (assuming you're right on that number), it only makes up 2% of the US GDP. That's why the US has to use agricultural subsidies and so on to prop it up. If exposed to competition from the third world, all the advanced technology in the world couldn't save the US agricultural sector.

More to the point, I don't buy the argument that US workers are productive enough to justify their massively higher wages. If you could show me right now, without relying on bourgeois productivity statistics, that they are, then I would instantly repudiate third worldism once and for all.

But you're not going to do that, because you can't. It's nonsense. A guy flipping burgers in a Cincinnati McDonald's for minimum wage is not fourteen times more productive than a Haitian construction worker. Bourgeois economists might like to claim so, but that's precisely why their analysis is garbage and you shouldn't be relying on it.

[Kayser_Soso]

I've seen no proof of this, but feel free to offer some if you have it.

I have plenty of proof. Go search for Third Worldists on the web and see where they are from.



But more importantly, this is racist garbage and you should be ashamed for peddling it.

Bullshit, first world people with plenty of privileges shouldn't idolize the Third World so that they can pretend to be ultra-revolutionary without doing anything.



Who gives a damn which countries third worldists come from? Only people who buy into national chauvinism, or are at least willing to rely on it in place of a real argument.

Bullshit. Third Worldists like to pretend they are revolutionary while using an excuse not to actually do anything in their countries. I have also seen Third Worldists like that DJ from MSH in the Netherlands claim that there weren't any exploited workers in America, despite the fact he probably has a much better standard of living than many Americans, if not most.



Being employed in a service industry does not mean you're an exploiter.

Who the hell said this?



But when entire nations liquidate their manufacturing and send it overseas, those nations become the exploiters of the whole world. There are bound to be some service or non-productive employment in all economies, but the sitaution in the US and rest of the first world is that you have massive numbers of non-productive workers for each productive worker, while the third world picks up the slack.

This doesn't change the fact that so long as you are paid far below the amount of value you create, you are exploited. Exploited is a calculable thing.

[Thug Lessons]

I have plenty of proof. Go search for Third Worldists on the web and see where they are from.
Point some of these out for me. Also, if you want, I can direct you to various claims by MSH to have members from across the world, in both the first and third worlds.


Bullshit, first world people with plenty of privileges shouldn't idolize the Third World so that they can pretend to be ultra-revolutionary without doing anything.So first worlders do have privileges? Explain this to me.

Anyway, where are you getting this idea that third worldists say we "shouldn't do anything"? They urge both action and development of theory, and support, (as well as likely sharing membership with), certain US anti-imperialist activists.


Bullshit. Third Worldists like to pretend they are revolutionary while using an excuse not to actually do anything in their countries. I have also seen Third Worldists like that DJ from MSH in the Netherlands claim that there weren't any exploited workers in America, despite the fact he probably has a much better standard of living than many Americans, if not most.That rumor is completely false. It was started by a particularly terrible poster in another forum I frequent. His gimmick was harassing communists and making up bizarre rumors about their personal lives, and MSH was a favored target. The fact that it's spread this far, (and someone even mentioned it on the MSH blog), is depressing and hilarious at the same time.


This doesn't change the fact that so long as you are paid far below the amount of value you create, you are exploited. Exploited is a calculable thing.I want you to read this:



You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.



In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

Who is he talking to here? The bourgeoisie itself? No, he's speaking to the small property owners, the petty-bourgeois professionals, the artistans, the middle class. In other words, the citizens of the first world. MSH is fond of reminding us that the proletariat, the exploited class, is the class that has nothing to lose but their chains. The first world has a lot more to lose. They can lose the houses they own, the cars they own, and the mountains of commodities the own so much of that they don't even know where to keep it all. In the US in particular, they could stand to lose a few pounds. Whatever you think about the exploitation calculation as it applies to the first world, you can't deny it's a much different situation than the one that Marx originally intended to address. And that's why the 'advanced' nations are so hostile to socialism when compared with the rest of the world.

[Kayser_Soso]

Point some of these out for me. Also, if you want, I can direct you to various claims by MSH to have members from across the world, in both the first and third worlds.

So first worlders do have privileges? Explain this to me.

It would be stupid to suggest that first world people don't have any privileges, but it doesn't change the fact that they are exploited.



Anyway, where are you getting this idea that third worldists say we "shouldn't do anything"? They urge both action and development of theory, and support, (as well as likely sharing membership with), certain US anti-imperialist activists.

In other words they do nothing but talk.






Who is he talking to here? The bourgeoisie itself? No, he's speaking to the small property owners, the petty-bourgeois professionals, the artistans, the middle class. In other words, the citizens of the first world.

Incorrect. The private property Marx referred to was capital, productive property. A worker's house is not capital. If he rents it out, he's a landlord and you can call him petit-bourgeois at best, but unless he derives most of his income from rent he's not really a capitalist.



MSH is fond of reminding us that the proletariat, the exploited class, is the class that has nothing to lose but their chains.

And this is why they are morons, because Marx didn't mean this literally. What "chains" did they have? Have you ever read Capital at all? Are you aware of the working conditions of the English proletariat which he describes at length in this work? Yet for all their exploitation(which borders on concentration camp conditions), they still hand living quarters, which may have been better than the quarters of someone living in say, Africa or Asia. Unlike a Russian peasant, they often didn't own their living quarters, so would a Russian peasant be better off than them?

Workers don't have "chains" like slaves. They always have something else to lose.



The first world has a lot more to lose. They can lose the houses they own, the cars they own, and the mountains of commodities the own so much of that they don't even know where to keep it all.

In order to buy all of that they must submit to exploitation in their workplace and exploitation by banks. What the crisis showed us is how fleeting that "ownership" really is, and how useless those mountains of commodities become as soon as someone doesn't have the means to buy any.



In the US in particular, they could stand to lose a few pounds. Whatever you think about the exploitation calculation as it applies to the first world, you can't deny it's a much different situation than the one that Marx originally intended to address. And that's why the 'advanced' nations are so hostile to socialism when compared with the rest of the world.

Only if you read it in an ultra-literal context without enough historical knowledge. Exploitation is exploitation. Do you honestly think that a revolution anywhere in the first world wouldn't be a huge benefit to the rest of the world? Moreover, the first world proletariat would actually gain FAR more from revolution, rather than lose it. Any country which undergoes revolution and civil war will have a loss in the standard of living. But being paid the full value of one's work constitutes a huge raise for working people.

Lastly, there are plenty of Third World workers who have no intention at causing revolution any time soon so in this respect they are not that much more likely to rise up than workers in first world countries.

[S.Artesian]

I generally dislike line-by-line replies, and they're especially bad when you're working with huge walls of text like this, so I'm going to trim it down to what I consider the most relevant points. If I ignore anything important, make sure to let me know.


Thanks, that book looks interesting and it's freely available online. I'll try to read the whole thing when I get a chance.

Now, I read the relevant section, and the author talks a little bit about how trade in the pre-colonial period set English wages higher than the standard of Europe. But then he immediately takes on imperialism, which he also sees as creating growth in English wages. It seems your own source refutes your argument. As for the US, high wages can be explained in terms of settlerism. Land was scarce in Europe, and colonists had a huge advantage over those in the Old World since they could appropriate as much as they needed from the natives.

The importance of international trade to the English wage structure is European trade. He says "In the 17th century, intra-European trade was the basis for London's expansion." If you look at his figure 2.1, you see English wages make their move upward and ahead of the low countries beginning in 1625.

Yes, the availability of land certainly impacted US wages, but that does not amount to a "transfer of wealth" from less developed countries.





Do these sources use PPP? Mine, the CIA World Factbook, does. You seem fairly knowledgeable about economics, so you should know that PPP is a much better measurement of national wealth than traditional GDP, and if your sources don't use it that would account for the discrepancy between your statistics and mine.The discrepancy doesn't account for the fact that the countries you cite with industrial output equivalent to the EU and US have 3 times the population. I'm using your basis for the comparison.


By citing those statistics I wasn't attempting to claim that a Chinese farmer was more productive than a US or European farmer. Obviously mechanization and nitrogen fertilizers make agriculture much more productive in the first world. It's one of the few, if not the only, situation where the West's advanced technology translates into vastly increased productivity.Now you're backtracking. You certainly did claim greater productivity of 3r world agriculture:


...as well the much larger and more productive agricultural sectors in the third world. Agriculture makes up <2% of GDP in the US and EU, while it's in the double digits in all those other countries I mentioned.



You know full well I don't have those figures sitting in front of me and that it would take months, or more likely years of research to collect them. Then again, I'm equally sure that you don't have anything to show that all, or even a majority of the first world's wealth through history comes from domestic production or production in other first world countries.You're the one making certain claims about the history of capitalist development, a history that you say determines capitalist reproduction in the current era. I say, and can show, that what you say about capitalist reproduction in the current era is, for the most part, inaccurate. Consequently, I'm asking you to provide the historical data that you claim determines that configuration of capital, that supports your assertions about past and present.


You're incorrect about this. In 2008 imports from China and Canada were of a similar value, but China's was still higher (source (http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/top/top0812yr.html)). In 2009 and as of June 2010 it was much higher. Canada is the US's largest trade partner overall, but that's because the US exports much more to Canada than China.US Census shows imports from China modestly greater than those from Canda. US Statistical Abstract for 2010 shows imports from Canada slightly greater than from China... but again, you backtrack. Your claim was [and a ridiculous one at that] was


...in the form of new commodities Chinese imports alone easily outweighs domestic production and imports from all other first world countries combined


As to productivity specifically, as far as I can tell it's a measurement of how effective a worker is at creating profits for capital. I see no reason to take the bourgeois economists at their word that this is anything like a genuine accounting of productivity or the creation of value.Not asking you to taking anybody at their word. I'm asking you, if you reject all the data available, to provide an independent exploration of these circuits of capital to prove your claims.



It's obvious to me. Imperialist nations exploit the entire world, and that seems like a much more likely explanation for wage disparity than increased productivity.Yeah but because it's obvious, doesn't mean it's accurate. The entire point of Marx's analysis of capital becomes with the disparity between what's obvious and what's actual, or as Marx would have put it, between appearance and essence. Marx himself says that if the obvious, the appearance, coincided with actuality, the essence, there would be no need for scientific investigation.



Yes, I suppose if you ignore the service sector, which makes up the majority of the US economy both in monetary and employment terms and has for some time, then things look pretty bad for the American worker. But that makes no sense, and the only reason you'd want to do it is to deliberately make things out to be worse than they are. Instead of looking at industrial wages, look at average household income, which is a much better measure. You'll see it's fairly stable. Instead of employment in industrial production, look at unemployment. Again, stable. Instead of number of children in poverty, an absolute metric, look at poverty rate, a relative metric. Stable.Wages for workers in the service sector are lower than wages for workers in the industrial sector. You can look at average household income, but then you need to adjust that number by the number of income producers per household and then adjust the figures again for occupations, so that you're not comparing lawyers to food processing workers.

Yeah, indeed look at unemployment. How can you reject statistics about output but accept the highly manipulated and distorted statistics on unemployment? You talk about cherry-picking? That's picking the rottenest cherry in the tree.


If anything, the decline in unionization supports third worldist theory, because it shows that first world workers no longer see organizing as necessary. You could argue that it was more about capitalist opposition than worker apathy, which is true to an extent, but union-busting is, if anything, much more subdued than in earlier eras when owners could openly use force against strikers and organizers. You don't know what you're talking about here. Workers don't see the need to organize? Oh that's what it is? The neo-liberal attack on unions, the intense lobbying for deregulation, the spinning off of "secondary" industries [railroad short lines, commuter airlines], off-shoring, capital flight, lawsuits against unions, asset-stripping, intimidation of migrant laborers-- those things have nothing to do with it, do they?



Well, I'll acknowledge that advanced technology has made US agriculture more productive, but not as much as you might expect. With only 2% of the population engaged in it, (assuming you're right on that number), it only makes up 2% of the US GDP. That's why the US has to use agricultural subsidies and so on to prop it up. If exposed to competition from the third world, all the advanced technology in the world couldn't save the US agricultural sector.Again, you simply do not know what you are talking about. How much do the subsidies amount to? What are the costs of production of milk, wheat, cotton, in the US? The subsidies are because the very technological intensity has reduced the difference between the cost-price and the price of production, thus shrinking profits.


More to the point, I don't buy the argument that US workers are productive enough to justify their massively higher wages. If you could show me right now, without relying on bourgeois productivity statistics, that they are, then I would instantly repudiate third worldism once and for all.

But you're not going to do that, because you can't. It's nonsense. A guy flipping burgers in a Cincinnati McDonald's for minimum wage is not fourteen times more productive than a Haitian construction worker. Bourgeois economists might like to claim so, but that's precisely why their analysis is garbage and you shouldn't be relying on it.Workers don't have to "justify" their wages. And there's no way to engage in a discussion of wage rates without utilizing the statistics gathered by different countries and organizations.

Somebody flipping burgers may or may not be more productive than a construction worker in Haiti for capital. It depends on how much time is spent in reproducing the necessary labor vs. the surplus labor.

In judging economies however we look at value output per unit of input. W have to use the statistics gathered by the bourgeoisie themselves, kind of like what Marx did when writing Capital.

[Thug Lessons]

It would be stupid to suggest that first world people don't have any privileges, but it doesn't change the fact that they are exploited.
Don't you find it strange that this form of exploitation works nothing like how Marx described it, and far from pushing first world workers towards subsistence-level wages in fact gives them relatively opulent wages compared to the rest of the world? And instead of engendering a revolutionary communist spirit, it leads them to reject socialism as an ideology and to look at Marxism with nothing but scorn?

First worldism is revisionist. It removes the communism from Marxism and reduces it to a mechanistic, useless calculation that proudly ignores the social context. If capital stocks were reduced to all of $5 after paying wages, this "Marxism" would still lable those workers as exploited and revolutionary. This is a dogmatic approach that will take you absolutely nowhere.


In other words they do nothing but talk.Wrong. They do not follow in the proud socialist tradition of running candidates that fail to crack double digits at the polls or promoting organizing efforts that result in concessions from management at best, but never revolution. However, this is not the same as doing nothing.


Incorrect. The private property Marx referred to was capital, productive property ... But being paid the full value of one's work constitutes a huge raise for working people. These are a bunch of words about why Marx and Engels didn't mean what they said but actually express some meaning that Kayser_Soso has discovered for himself. Apparently Marx actually didn't oppose private property, just capital, and thought that access to credit was exploitation. He also manages to confuse the "nothing to lose but your chains" line with a genuine Marx quote. No response is necessary here, it speaks for itself.


Lastly, there are plenty of Third World workers who have no intention at causing revolution any time soon so in this respect they are not that much more likely to rise up than workers in first world countries.Every successful communist revolution has taken place in the third world. Do first worldists see this as mere coincidence, or do they have an explanation?

[Kayser_Soso]

Don't you find it strange that this form of exploitation works nothing like how Marx described it, and far from pushing first world workers towards subsistence-level wages in fact gives them relatively opulent wages compared to the rest of the world? And instead of engendering a revolutionary communist spirit, it leads them to reject socialism as an ideology and to look at Marxism with nothing but scorn?

Actually it depends on the country and which workers we are speaking of. The idea that Marx believed in general impoverishment of the working class is a stawman argument used by capitalist apologists. Marx originally considered this based on acceptance of Ricardo's theories. He then later revised it, understanding that real wages do indeed rise under capitalism in some countries, and that the price of labor power is generally reduced to what it takes to "reproduce" the worker depending on the level of development in a nation.

The rest of this is just idealistic idiocy. It is not accurate to say that all workers in what you call the "first world" reject Marxism with "nothing but scorn." You could find that same reaction in many third world countries where people will tell you: "at least I have a job." Many of those who protest against their work conditions also do not intend to overthrow the whole system or seize the means of production. People's reaction to Marxism has to do with their exposure and understanding of the ideology. Turkey is not a third world country, for example(save for it's Eastern region), but Marxism is so popular there you can find the works of Marx, Lenin, and even Stalin displayed prominently in bookstores in the center of Istanbul.



First worldism is revisionist. It removes the communism from Marxism and reduces it to a mechanistic, useless calculation that proudly ignores the social context.

Incorrect, Third Worldism is revisionist.



If capital stocks were reduced to all of $5 after paying wages, this "Marxism" would still lable those workers as exploited and revolutionary. This is a dogmatic approach that will take you absolutely nowhere.

You're going to have to elaborate on this bullshit theory a little more.



Wrong. They do not follow in the proud socialist tradition of running candidates that fail to crack double digits at the polls or promoting organizing efforts that result in concessions from management at best, but never revolution. However, this is not the same as doing nothing.

No, it's doing nothing. Period.



These are a bunch of words about why Marx and Engels didn't mean what they said but actually express some meaning that Kayser_Soso has discovered for himself.

Me and pretty much every other Marxist.



Apparently Marx actually didn't oppose private property, just capital, and thought that access to credit was exploitation.

Reading isn't your strong point isn't it? You clearly don't know the difference between personal and private property. Were you aware that exploited workers in the Third World actually own cell phones, and sometimes rent apartments? Do you realize they too have things to lose? Were you aware that there are still many peasants who own small plots of land? Should we cheer on their expropriation?



He also manages to confuse the "nothing to lose but your chains" line with a genuine Marx quote. No response is necessary here, it speaks for itself.

Moron, you said "workers have nothing to lose but their chains." Workers do not have chains, workers have far more to lose than just metaphorical chains. Ergo you are wrong.



Every successful communist revolution has taken place in the third world. Do first worldists see this as mere coincidence, or do they have an explanation?

Czechoslovakia was Third World? Was the Russian Empire, an imperialist state, "Third World"? And how do you explain all your glorious Third World revolutions falling flat on their face and delivering their workers'(even expropriating peasants) labor up to first world nations?

Your arguments are a joke.

[Thug Lessons]

The importance of international trade to the English wage structure is European trade. He says "In the 17th century, intra-European trade was the basis for London's expansion." If you look at his figure 2.1, you see English wages make their move upward and ahead of the low countries beginning in 1625.

Yes, the availability of land certainly impacted US wages, but that does not amount to a "transfer of wealth" from less developed countries.
And then, according to your own source, Britain's imperialist expansion allowed wages to continue to climb. So what if they were higher to begin with? That doesn't explain how they were able to maintain, and in fact raise, those high levels. As for the US, what else would you call the theft of land from the native population?


The discrepancy doesn't account for the fact that the countries you cite with industrial output equivalent to the EU and US have 3 times the population. I'm using your basis for the comparison.Well, that was actually in response to your claim that "the bulk of industrial production and profits is centered in the advanced countries". My comparison was an attempt to challenge that. Anyway, third worldism doesn't need to show that third world industry produces more per capita than Western industry to be correct. I do believe that though, because third world labor is undervalued. Wages and thereby commodity prices are kept artificially low by the imperialists and comprador governments.


Now you're backtracking. You certainly did claim greater productivity of 3r world agriculture:Perhaps that was poor choice of words. I didn't mean to imply that individual farmers in the third world are more productive than those in the first, but simply that third world agriculture sectors produce more, both in terms of volume of commodities and wealth, than first world agriculture.


You're the one making certain claims about the history of capitalist development, a history that you say determines capitalist reproduction in the current era. I say, and can show, that what you say about capitalist reproduction in the current era is, for the most part, inaccurate. Consequently, I'm asking you to provide the historical data that you claim determines that configuration of capital, that supports your assertions about past and present.You're not just asking for historical data. You're asking for a statistical accounting of wealth creation in the US over a 400-year period. We can begin to discuss the specifics of imperialism and settlerism, but I need a more reasonable starting point than that. And the burden of proof doesn't rest entirely on me just because you posed the question first. I easily could have asked you "show me statistics that prove that the US's wealth has historically come primarily from domestic, non-slave, non-Indian sources". Because that is a claim you're making, correct?


US Census shows imports from China modestly greater than those from Canda. US Statistical Abstract for 2010 shows imports from Canada slightly greater than from China... but again, you backtrack. Your claim was [and a ridiculous one at that] was Yeah, I do seem to be overreaching there. Not sure where I was getting that. However those Census number posted earlier do show a majority of imports coming from the third world.


Yeah but because it's obvious, doesn't mean it's accurate. The entire point of Marx's analysis of capital becomes with the disparity between what's obvious and what's actual, or as Marx would have put it, between appearance and essence. Marx himself says that if the obvious, the appearance, coincided with actuality, the essence, there would be no need for scientific investigation.Fair enough. But I've yet to see a scientific deconstruction of third worldism here, or anywhere. All I get is demands for massive statistical evidence, (which was hardly Marx's style), demands that I stay within the bounds bourgeois economics' hilariously flawed indicators, and dogmatic assertions that "exploitation is exploitation" from people who refuse to examine whether what appears to be exploitation may, in fact, be something different in essense.


Wages for workers in the service sector are lower than wages for workers in the industrial sector. You can look at average household income, but then you need to adjust that number by the number of income producers per household and then adjust the figures again for occupations, so that you're not comparing lawyers to food processing workers.Let's see it. Honestly you're making this more complicated than it needs to be, but almost anything would be better than looking only at industrial production while ignoring the majority of the economy.


Yeah, indeed look at unemployment. How can you reject statistics about output but accept the highly manipulated and distorted statistics on unemployment? You talk about cherry-picking? That's picking the rottenest cherry in the tree.Yes, there are serious questions about the way unemployment is measured in the US. There were some changes back in the Reagan years that effectively cut some people off that should have been on there. But it's not enough to make a huge difference, and more importantly it hasn't resulted in increases in poverty indicators.


You don't know what you're talking about here. Workers don't see the need to organize? Oh that's what it is? The neo-liberal attack on unions, the intense lobbying for deregulation, the spinning off of "secondary" industries [railroad short lines, commuter airlines], off-shoring, capital flight, lawsuits against unions, asset-stripping, intimidation of migrant laborers-- those things have nothing to do with it, do they?No, I definitely acknowledged this, but pointed out it's in no way worse than the days when the bosses could hire Pinkertons to crush strikers with no fear of consequences. Back then unionization was rising, but for the last few decades it's been falling.


Workers don't have to "justify" their wages. And there's no way to engage in a discussion of wage rates without utilizing the statistics gathered by different countries and organizations.

Somebody flipping burgers may or may not be more productive than a construction worker in Haiti for capital. It depends on how much time is spent in reproducing the necessary labor vs. the surplus labor.Maybe "explain" would be a better word. And feel free to use all the statistics you want, just don't expect me to take them at face value. You shouldn't either.


In judging economies however we look at value output per unit of input. W have to use the statistics gathered by the bourgeoisie themselves, kind of like what Marx did when writing Capital. OK, let's do that.

In Cincinnati, there's a McDonald's employee that works full-time, 40 hours a week, for minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. Yearly this comes to about $15,000. In Port-au-Prince, there's a construction worker who spends his 12-16 hour days building houses, and he pulls in about $1,300 yearly. Is there any way to explain this disparity in terms of greater productivity? By any reasonable metric, the Haitian worker is an economic powerhouse compared to the American worker. He works longer hours doing harder work and produces far more use value.

You might answer, "well, the McDonald's worker creates more profit for capital (i.e. he's more productive based on neoclassical measures)". But so what? That's got nothing to do with value. Is there something I'm missing here? I'm not even trying to be a smartass, but I don't understand how anyone could buy that interpretation.

[S.Artesian]

.


In Cincinnati, there's a McDonald's employee that works full-time, 40 hours a week, for minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. Yearly this comes to about $15,000. In Port-au-Prince, there's a construction worker who spends his 12-16 hour days building houses, and he pulls in about $1,300 yearly. Is there any way to explain this disparity in terms of greater productivity? By any reasonable metric, the Haitian worker is an economic powerhouse compared to the American worker. He works longer hours doing harder work and produces far more use value.

You might answer, "well, the McDonald's worker creates more profit for capital (i.e. he's more productive based on neoclassical measures)". But so what? That's got nothing to do with value. Is there something I'm missing here? I'm not even trying to be a smartass, but I don't understand how anyone could buy that interpretation.You obviously haven't read Marx or understood it to make a sentence like that. Exactly what do you think constitutes value? Exactly how is the realization of surplus value realized in capitalist society? Making more profit for capital is exactly how marks defines productive labor.

There's no point continuing this sort of discussion, where you backtrack, temporize, and simply make things up, and then reveal that you don't have the slightest grasp of value, profit, and wages-- or things like the social cost of reproduction; the time spent on necessary labor for the reproduction of the worker vs. the surplus-time aggrandized by the capitalist.

Re Allen-- you need to read the book closely. Look at the spikes in British wages. They start in 1625 which is about the time yeoman and capitalist tenant farming start up, London's population soars, and England begins to dominate trade with the North countries. It continues despite the contraction in trade with the North countries with increased trade to the Levant.

Look again at the wage pattern. It spikes again in 1775 and continues its climb through, and due to, the onset of the industrial revolution. If you look at agricultural product prices during the onset of the industrial revolution and particularly through the Napoleonic Wars, those prices are soaring and that's why the English wage structure remains so high, not because the profits from plantations in Jamaica, Barbados, or even slave trade are "distributed."

Remember, England outlawed the slave trade in 1807. If you look at actual history you'll see the center of English economic activity moving from Liverpool to Manchester-- from the trading port, and the one used extensively for outfitting slave ships, to the manufacturing center for textiles.

What drives the wage structure are the costs of English labor, not the profits from mercantilist trade arrangements.


The rest of what you say... well, mostly it's opinion. Which you are entitled to have, as inaccurate and ill-founded as they are.

You're the guy making the argument about third-worldism. If you think that somehow the center of capitalist reproduction, and contradiction, is in the third world, you have to show that capitalist reproduction-- not make ridiculous claims about agricultural productivity, volumes of imports, or the supposed "stability" of the living standards of the working class in the US since 1980. And then when challenged, you say it's no worse than the time of the Pinkertons. That's great, the so-called stability of the working class, its ability to organize itself, is just about where it was in 1877. That's some real privilege workers in the US have.

[S.Artesian]

One more thing-- regarding the "bulk" of industrial production-- the World Bank tables on value added in industrial production per country estimate the value for such output in 2007 [the last year of full country reporting] at $15.155 trillion. Of that amount France, Germany, Italy, UK, US, Australia, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Sweden account for approximately $7.8 trillion.

US accounted for $2.786 trillion, China $1.64 trillion, Japan 1.276 trillion, Brazil 320 billion, Mexico about $315 billion, Russia 420 billion, India also about 315 billion, Germany 920 billlion.

I am not including in the numbers for Malaysia and Singapore, which should rightly be considered "advanced countries."

[Thug Lessons]

.You obviously haven't read Marx or understood it to make a sentence like that. Exactly what do you think constitutes value? Exactly how is the realization of surplus value realized in capitalist society? Making more profit for capital is exactly how marks defines productive labor.
This is rather muddled, but I assume your objection runs something along the lines of "profit comes from surplus value, so workers who create more profit must be creating more surplus value". That last sentence is where you go wrong though. He doesn't define productive labor as labor that creates profit for capitalists, he defines it as labor that produces value that capitalists can leech off of. And he makes quite clear that only the definition of value under capitalism, rather than universally.

People create profit all the time without being productive, i.e. creating value. A car salesman creates profit for his employer every time he sells a car, but no value has been created here. Nothing has changed at all. The value was created as the car was created, and the salesman, (as well as his employer), simply appropriate a part of this when they sell that car to public for a mark-up. Being profitable is in no way an indication of value creation. Banks make profit when they inflict usury on their clients and when they foreclose on then sell people's houses. Are we to believe this is productive?


There's no point continuing this sort of discussion, where you backtrack, temporize, and simply make things up, and then reveal that you don't have the slightest grasp of value, profit, and wages-- or things like the social cost of reproduction; the time spent on necessary labor for the reproduction of the worker vs. the surplus-time aggrandized by the capitalist.You've got plenty of bluster but not much to back it up. I've made a couple mistakes in this discussion, though I've owned up and tried to mitigate. But you've made some mistakes too, but it seems like you're unwilling to even acknowledge this. Maybe rather than getting indignant we could stay calm and try to move forward. If something I've said strikes you as dishonest, point it out and I'll either address it or concede, but if you can't do that then perhaps you're right and there's no point in continuing this.


Re Allen--I don't expect a perfect correlation between wages and imperialism in that era. And I have no objections to the idea that industrialization was the primary factor in English wages through most of the 18th century, nor does any third worldist I know of. This line of discussion was originally about historical transfer of value through imperialism, which was definitely happening during that time, but I agree that it wasn't the primary factor in wages during this time. That came later.


You're the guy making the argument about third-worldism. If you think that somehow the center of capitalist reproduction is in the third world, you have to show that capitalist reproduction-- not make ridiculous claims about agricultural productivity, volumes of imports, or the supposed "stability" of the living standards of the working class in the US since 1980. And then when challenged, you say it's now worse than the time of the Pinkertons. That's great, the so-called stability of the working class, its ability to organize itself, is just about where it was in 1877. That's some real privilege workers in the US have.I don't want it to just be about third worldism, I want it to be about third worldism vs. first worldism (or anti-third worldism, whatever you want to call it). So far, we've heard my third worldist views and your attempts to poke holes in them, claim they aren't Marxist, say I don't understand Marx, and so on. But what we haven't heard is the opposing side, that is, the reasons you oppose third worldism.

I've brought up some substantial criticisms. I've challenged the usefulness of productivity statistics that claim people who work harder, longer hours and produce more can be less, or even much less, productive than people who work relatively short and easy hours. As far as I can tell you have no response. I've pointed out that first worlders are not revolutionary, that there's never been a sucessful revolution in the first world, and with a few exceptions, (France comes to mind), they reject socialism as an ideology. I've shown that only a small minority of first world workers are involved in industrial production, while many more third world workers are involved both in industry and agriculture and produce physical commodities. These have all either been ignored or insufficiently addressed.

You want this discussion to focus entirely on statistical economic questions. But there is a larger social question that is falling by the wayside, namely "could the first world living standards be sustained without relying on the third world?" Regardless of the discussion of profits, trade, and GDP, the fact remains that most of the labor-hours going in to the commodities first worlders use are coming from third world workers. To me it seems deep contradictory to the labor theory of value to say that this is irrelevant and all that matters is who creates more profit. This is why I see production as being centered in the third world.


A couple more notes: you must have misread what I said about the Pinkertons. I didn't say it's "now worse", I said it's "in no way worse". It's far better.

Also, give me some credit on the agricultural productivity thing. I'm not a moron. That claim looked ridiculous because you read it wrong and the wording was ambiguous, and I clarified what I meant later on.

[S.Artesian]

This first:


Also, give me some credit on the agricultural productivity thing. I'm not a moron. That claim looked ridiculous because you read it wrong and the wording was ambiguous, and I clarified what I meant later on.

This first: I did not read anything wrong. I quoted it to you in the reply. Your language wasn't the least bit ambiguous. You claimed greater productivity for agricultural sectors in 3rd world countries.

You have also claimed greater productivity in 3rd world countries for industrial production without providing a shred of evidence for this. The greater productivity certainly does not exist in China in coal mining, railroad freight movement, aluminum production, steel production etc. Take steel for example. China's largest producer produced about the same gross tonnage as Nippon Steel produced, with China's steelmaker employing 8 time the labor of Nippon Steel.


A couple more notes: you must have misread what I said about the Pinkertons. I didn't say it's "now worse", I said it's "in no way worse". It's far better

"Now" was a typo for "no" which I corrected today when I reread the post. So you're claiming the anti-union drive now is no worse than it was in 1877-- which is some stability. But what is not the same is.... capitalism. Whereas capitalism was in 1877 expanding relative surplus value at the same time as it was expanding the absolute accumulation through greater centralization of capital, expanded employment of industrial workers, such is not the case today. The decentralization of capital, its ability to disperse its operations in a "supply chain" and then reassemble a product with drastically reduced labor makes conditions for the working class everywhere highly unstable.

This next:


You want this discussion to focus entirely on statistical economic questions. But there is a larger social question that is falling by the wayside, namely "could the first world living standards be sustained without relying on the third world?" Regardless of the discussion of profits, trade, and GDP, the fact remains that most of the labor-hours going in to the commodities first worlders use are coming from third world workers. To me it seems deep contradictory to the labor theory of value to say that this is irrelevant and all that matters is who creates more profit. This is why I see production as being centered in the third world.

No, I do not. I want you to provide some evidence, some tangible evidence for the claims you are making. This is precisely what you tried to do at first and when called on it, backpedaled to where you are now, denying the validity of data an claiming "the fact remains that most of the labor-hours going in to the commodities first worlders use are coming from third world workers."

Again you assume what must be demonstrated and proven. What are the commodities that workers in advanced countries use most-- which is another way of saying-- what constitute most of their expenditures? Food. Is most of that coming from the third world? No. Medical expenses and in particular pharmaceuticals. Most of those medical expenses going to the 3rd world? No. Rent and housing-- 3rd world? No. Clothing-- here's where there's probably a majority of the purchases being purchases of imports.

But irregardless, exactly how does the importation of commodities from the 3rd world occur without prior export of capital? So do we have a condition where the bourgeoisie of the advanced countries exploit the labor in the less developed countries. Already answered that: Absolutely. That's the relationship of capital and labor. Your argument is something different. Your argument is that wages in the advanced countries depend upon that super-exploitation in the less advanced countries; that workers in the advanced countries have a material interest in that exploitation; that in fact workers in the advanced countries probably don't even exist as a value producing class anymore, and may not even be workers. That's where "3rd worldism" goes with this argument.

Capital doesn't work like that. It doesn't socially reproduce its relations of production by exploiting one sector of the working class more so it can exploit another sector less. Every advance of wages brings about, sooner or later, than reaction against that advance by either relative changes in production methods, i.e. increasing productivity, or absolute methods, attacking living standards, reducing wages, shutting down swathes of industry, increasing the pressure of wages yet again.

This next:


I've brought up some substantial criticisms. I've challenged the usefulness of productivity statistics that claim people who work harder, longer hours and produce more can be less, or even much less, productive than people who work relatively short and easy hours. As far as I can tell you have no response. I've pointed out that first worlders are not revolutionary, that there's never been a sucessful revolution in the first world, and with a few exceptions, (France comes to mind), they reject socialism as an ideology. I've shown that only a small minority of first world workers are involved in industrial production, while many more third world workers are involved both in industry and agriculture and produce physical commodities. These have all either been ignored or insufficiently addressed.

You can challenge anything, if you consider saying "I challenge that" a real challenge. That's all you've done. You've done nothing to point out substantially where the stats on productivity, value added etc, deviate from the actual conditions of production and reproduction.

As for what you say about successful revolutions in the advanced countries, well there was 1 such revolution lead by the advanced class of a country characterized by uneven and combined development-- that was the revolution in Russia, lead by the workers in its most "internationalized" sectors and locations-- metallurgy, Petrograd etc. As for the workers in other countries-- I don't think they reject socialism at all. Trade unions and workers in the UK still have a fundamental allegiance to "old Labor"-- the old Labor politics that claimed socialism-- the fact that socialism is taken to mean state operation of major sectors of the economy without expropriation of the bourgeoisie, does not change the fact that the workers are not against socialism. Nor are the workers in France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy anti-socialist since these workers consistently vote for socialist parties, electing them to national power, or vote for communist parties, electing them to local and regional governments.

What you've shown about capitalism in the advanced and less advanced countries is merely the reflection of the greater productivity, the advanced development of capitalism in the advanced countries. It's the reason it is advanced.

Revolutions in the 3rd world are hardly establishing an enviable track record, unwinding themselves with either greater or lesser speed, but nonetheless unwinding themselves...with the help, aid, direct investment of the advanced capital which is supposedly, in your vision, so decrepit.

This next:



I don't want it to just be about third worldism, I want it to be about third worldism vs. first worldism (or anti-third worldism, whatever you want to call it). So far, we've heard my third worldist views and your attempts to poke holes in them, claim they aren't Marxist, say I don't understand Marx, and so on. But what we haven't heard is the opposing side, that is, the reasons you oppose third worldism.

Since I have no idea what "first worldism" is, and if I did, I wouldn't adhere to it since I think there's only one world of capitalism, a world of uneven and combined development, I can't and won't argue "first worldism" vs."third worldism" for exactly the reasons I think your third worldism is nonsense-- it does not accurately represent the condition of capital and the terms of capitalist reproduction.

Next:


People create profit all the time without being productive, i.e. creating value. A car salesman creates profit for his employer every time he sells a car, but no value has been created here. Nothing has changed at all. The value was created as the car was created, and the salesman, (as well as his employer), simply appropriate a part of this when they sell that car to public for a mark-up. Being profitable is in no way an indication of value creation. Banks make profit when they inflict usury on their clients and when they foreclose on then sell people's houses. Are we to believe this is productive?

Who said anything about salesman or bankers? We're talking about workers. You're claiming workers in the advanced country are not "productive enough" to "justify" their wages. You use the example of the person making hamburgers in McDonald's vs the construction worker in Haiti. The problem of course is that you ignore the breakdown, the relation of the labor time involved in these processes. The person making hamburgers may be more productive because he or she reproduces his or her own wage in less time proportional to the total time worked than the construction worker in Haiti. That is what Marx describes as productive labor-- adding surplus value to capital. To do that, the wage has to be reproduced in less than the total working day. Capitalist development and production is all about reducing necessary labor time and increasing socially disposable, surplus, labor time.

So before we say the person at McDonald's is "overpaid" or his/her wages are subsidized by the wages of the Haitian construction worker, we need to figure that relation, and to do that we also need to know the social costs of reproduction of the laborer-- what that person at McDonald's has to pay for his/her own upkeep in food, clothing, medicine, rent, taxes, transportation, education, etc. vs those proportions in Haiti. And even then there remains the small problem of actually tracing the circuit of capital to show how the wages at McDonald's are subsidized by the wages in construction in Haiti.

And BTW the wages at McDonald's, all $7.25/hr as exorbitant a wage as that is, adds up to 15,000 a year-- or almost exactly the amount that indicates poverty in the US. So you're argument is that poverty is in fact subsidized by the third world, which I'm sure is very comforting to all the working poor.

As for the definition of value under capitalism, yeah that's the definition of value under capitalism. It's the only system we're dealing with. It, value, refers to capitalist value. The production of exchangeable value through the organization of labor as wage-labor.

I think you have a very basic confusion between use-value and exchange-value, thinking that somehow the construction of houses in Haiti is more "valuable" than the production of hamburgers in the US. Again, that's not how capitalism functions. Hamburgers and houses are "equal"-- equivalents, or can be made equivalents by the socially necessary labor time involved in their reproduction. That's the only value that capital recognizes.

This last:

Now you can either deal with some data, or not. It's up to you.

And that's the last I have to say on this, because until you do, it's just wasting time.

[Adi Shankara]

Today, Third Worldism is expounded mainly by a few small post-Maoist groups, specifically the practically defunct Maoist International Movement (MIM) and the Maoist-Third Worldists (M-TW), who run the blog Monkey Smashes Heaven and partner with the US anti-imperialist group RAIM.

Wait...so Third Worldists only exist on the internet? :lol:

[Dimentio]

I agree the third worldists have a lot of valid points. If people are too content or fear that they might lose what things they have, they will often react by legitimising the system. That is why revolutions seldom happen in societies where the people are content.

At the same time, no progressive movement could truly work for progress without taking into account all the peoples of the world. While those in the third world who are starving and struggling to survive the next day should be highest on our priority list, people everywhere deserve a better future, and we should never neglect people because they are coming from the "wrong" region.

All human beings deserve a future worthy of humans, and all human beings who have interest in replacing the current, unsustainable way of life with a sustainable way of life for all people should be involved.

All other ways would only serve to strengthen the various nationalisms.

[Kayser_Soso]

I agree the third worldists have a lot of valid points. If people are too content or fear that they might lose what things they have, they will often react by legitimising the system. That is why revolutions seldom happen in societies where the people are content.

At the same time, no progressive movement could truly work for progress without taking into account all the peoples of the world. While those in the third world who are starving and struggling to survive the next day should be highest on our priority list, people everywhere deserve a better future, and we should never neglect people because they are coming from the "wrong" region.

All human beings deserve a future worthy of humans, and all human beings who have interest in replacing the current, unsustainable way of life with a sustainable way of life for all people should be involved.

All other ways would only serve to strengthen the various nationalisms.

Not to mention that people in the third world actually do have a lot to lose. The workers have usually already lost the land they used for subsistence farming, and depend on the EPZs and what-not. If you follow the news in other countries(especially South Asia), as soon as there is the remote chance that a slightly-left of center(or remotely pro-labor) candidate might win, foreign investors threaten to run with their capital. Imagine what they would do if there was a realistic threat of revolution. The factories would be torn down, millions out of work. Their revolution needs assurance that it can be carried through resolutely, and relatively quickly lest their infrastructure collapse.

[Dimentio]

Not to mention that people in the third world actually do have a lot to lose. The workers have usually already lost the land they used for subsistence farming, and depend on the EPZs and what-not. If you follow the news in other countries(especially South Asia), as soon as there is the remote chance that a slightly-left of center(or remotely pro-labor) candidate might win, foreign investors threaten to run with their capital. Imagine what they would do if there was a realistic threat of revolution. The factories would be torn down, millions out of work. Their revolution needs assurance that it can be carried through resolutely, and relatively quickly lest their infrastructure collapse.

Basically, what the people of the third world in particular need is a large country in the first world to move to a progressive direction and use itself as a tool to bring about change in other parts of the world. Basically, a superpower needs to be turned.

[Thug Lessons]

S.Artesian, that was a very good post, and one that comes much closer to addressing the central issues that third worldism raises, (though not close enough, but I'll get to that later). I think our discussion is finally getting somewhere. Thanks for helping there, and thanks more generally for taking this issue seriously and addressing it in a sincere and thoughtful way. Also, if you want to see the most important part of my post, skip to the last three paragraphs I wrote.


This first: I did not read anything wrong. I quoted it to you in the reply. Your language wasn't the least bit ambiguous. You claimed greater productivity for agricultural sectors in 3rd world countries.
Yes, exactly, third world agricultural sectors. According to the CIA World Factbook, the US agricultural sector makes up 1.2% of the economy and produces about $170 billion in goods. The Mexican agricultural sector makes up 13.7% of the economy and produces about $200 billion in goods. My reason for pointing this out is not to show that Mexican farmers are more productive, since that's clearly not true, but to show that more people in Mexico are employed in productive labor that produces commodities rather than shuffling around papers or managing people as is often the case in the US.

The same goes for third world industry. There, many more workers are employed in productive industrial labor. It doesn't really demonstrate much to show that they are less productive per capita than US industrial workers, because they make up such a small part of the US workforce, (14% based on previous sources). We're not talking about whether that tiny minority is productive, but the entire US population.


"Now" was a typo for "no" which I corrected today when I reread the post. So you're claiming the anti-union drive now is no worse than it was in 1877-- which is some stability. But what is not the same is.... capitalism. Whereas capitalism was in 1877 expanding relative surplus value at the same time as it was expanding the absolute accumulation through greater centralization of capital, expanded employment of industrial workers, such is not the case today. The decentralization of capital, its ability to disperse its operations in a "supply chain" and then reassemble a product with drastically reduced labor makes conditions for the working class everywhere highly unstable.
"In no way worse" does not mean "the same". It's a figure of speech that implies, far from being worse, things are actually better. Which is definitely the case in first world labor organizing. While strike-breaking and anti-unionization efforts still exist, companies have much less leeway to use violence and intimidation in breaking strikes and recieve less government support in doing so. That's what I was trying to say.


No, I do not. I want you to provide some evidence, some tangible evidence for the claims you are making. This is precisely what you tried to do at first and when called on it, backpedaled to where you are now, denying the validity of data an claiming "the fact remains that most of the labor-hours going in to the commodities first worlders use are coming from third world workers."

Again you assume what must be demonstrated and proven. What are the commodities that workers in advanced countries use most-- which is another way of saying-- what constitute most of their expenditures? Food. Is most of that coming from the third world? No. Medical expenses and in particular pharmaceuticals. Most of those medical expenses going to the 3rd world? No. Rent and housing-- 3rd world? No. Clothing-- here's where there's probably a majority of the purchases being purchases of imports.
Well, there's also transportation, which is actually the second-largest expense for US households. Here, the reliance on the third world is clear. In addition to sizeable auto imports from the third world, almost all of of the petroleum products we use for fuel are imported from third world countries.

Now let's look at those other areas you mention. Medical expenses are a tiny fraction the average household budget and can be ignored. Food is largely produced domestically, no doubt, but a good deal is imported too, and more importantly US agriculture is heavily dependent on third world labor. The overwhelming majority of agricultural workers in the US are foreign migrants working for below minimum wage. As for rent and mortgage payments, those has nothing to do with labor power, but the actual production of houses is supported by a large (though not majority) foreign labor component, not to mention all the imports of construction supplies that drive the industry.

More generally, the first world is supplied with raw materials, industrial products and consumer goods by the third world. This makes up the base of my claim that the average first worlder is supplied with commodities created mostly by third world labor.


Capital doesn't work like that. It doesn't socially reproduce its relations of production by exploiting one sector of the working class more so it can exploit another sector less. Every advance of wages brings about, sooner or later, than reaction against that advance by either relative changes in production methods, i.e. increasing productivity, or absolute methods, attacking living standards, reducing wages, shutting down swathes of industry, increasing the pressure of wages yet again.
I see no reason to assume this is true. To do so is dogmatic. And, in fact, history has show that it's not the case. Over the last century wages in the first world have skyrocketed, but only one of those things you list, the decline of industry, (and agriculture, wrongly omitted), has happened. But sectors have risen to pick up the slack during the last 30 years. Wages remain high. Poverty remains low. Unemployment statistics have actually fallen, (the current crisis aside), but as you point out this is largely do to adjustments in the measure during the Reagan era. Will this change eventually? I think so, but until they do, third worldism is correct. Your floundering and grasping at any irrelevant statistic to justify your claims, while ignoring or denying the relevant statistics that refute it, only serves to reinforce this.


As for what you say about successful revolutions in the advanced countries, well there was 1 such revolution lead by the advanced class of a country characterized by uneven and combined development-- that was the revolution in Russia, lead by the workers in its most "internationalized" sectors and locations-- metallurgy, Petrograd etc. As for the workers in other countries-- I don't think they reject socialism at all. Trade unions and workers in the UK still have a fundamental allegiance to "old Labor"-- the old Labor politics that claimed socialism-- the fact that socialism is taken to mean state operation of major sectors of the economy without expropriation of the bourgeoisie, does not change the fact that the workers are not against socialism. Nor are the workers in France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy anti-socialist since these workers consistently vote for socialist parties, electing them to national power, or vote for communist parties, electing them to local and regional governments.
Russia was not an advanced country, or at least I can't recall any socialist thinker of the era who believed it was. Lenin explicitly referred to it as backward. Russia was a largely agrarian feudal society with small sectors of industrial development in the large cities. Its citizens were much poorer than those of the UK, France, Germany, and so on. Essentially, it was third world.

As for first world citizens voting for socialist parties, I see little to be impressed with. I'm not too familiar with the socialists in Italy or Greece, but those in France and Spain are social democrats at best. Their policies are concentrated on improving the quality of life for poor people and society in general within their borders, not changing their nation's economic system. The same could be said of Labour in the UK and the various parties claiming to be socialist in the Scandinavian countries. The results of genuinely communist parties is telling. They are only elected to local governments specifically because they do not enjoy enough public support to reach national office except in rare cases.

Now, let's look more closely at the first world's views on socialism, specifically this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8347409.stm). It's a BBC poll about capitalism vs. socialism and the Soviet Union. When you look at the responses on the socialism question, first world countries usually show lower support than third world countries. Of the 12 countries surveyed as to whether they want to change their economic system, France tops the list of supporters, but along with Spain it's the only imperialist nation in the top 6. The bottom 3 are the UK, US and Germany, the largest industrial producers in the first world besides Japan.

When we look at opinion on a genuine socialist experiment, the USSR, however, that's when the difference becomes clearer. All of the advanced nations see the fall of the USSR as a good thing by overwhelming margins, 75-85% to 5-15%. In the third world, it's often the exact opposite. Chile and Nigera also show majorities seeing it as a good thing, though not nearly as large as those in the first world, while many third world nations show strong majorities seeing the collapse as a bad thing. Taken together, what we can draw from this is that while they may occasionally be sympathic towards the ideals of socialism, they are uniformly hostile to socialism in practice. The third world, on the other hand, is not always anti-capitalist, but they are not willing to dismiss socialist nations on that basis.


Revolutions in the 3rd world are hardly establishing an enviable track record, unwinding themselves with either greater or lesser speed, but nonetheless unwinding themselves...with the help, aid, direct investment of the advanced capital which is supposedly, in your vision, so decrepit.
They're certainly eviable in comparison to the complete defeat of the revolutionary forces by reaction and opportunism. Socialism in the third world was far from perfect and many mistakes were made, but unlike socialism in the first world it created the space where a communist society could arise given the correct political and social development.


Who said anything about salesman or bankers? We're talking about workers. You're claiming workers in the advanced country are not "productive enough" to "justify" their wages.
The point of that was to demonstrate the uselesses of taking profit creation as a measure of productivity.


So before we say the person at McDonald's is "overpaid" or his/her wages are subsidized by the wages of the Haitian construction worker, we need to figure that relation, and to do that we also need to know the social costs of reproduction of the laborer-- what that person at McDonald's has to pay for his/her own upkeep in food, clothing, medicine, rent, taxes, transportation, education, etc. vs those proportions in Haiti. And even then there remains the small problem of actually tracing the circuit of capital to show how the wages at McDonald's are subsidized by the wages in construction in Haiti.
Third worldism does not claim that each underpaid third world worker subsidizes the first world. This takes place only when they are directly involved with supplying the first world in the form of commodites. But in a larger sense, the first world is holding the third world back through imperialism. The exploitation of the third world's labor and natural resources is the largest and most glaring form of this, but far from the only one. The first world keeps a monopoly on its advanced technology through the use of patents, high prices for capital goods, and the brain drain. And that's not to mention military intervention in the third world and a host of other measures that help to keep them undeveloped.

As for the reproduction of the laborer, I do not assume that everything a worker buys is necessary. Most jobs in the first world could be performed by workers with a lower standard of living. Why is advanced medicine, for example, necessary? It disproportionally benefits the elderly who are already retired or on the verge of retirement to begin with. The medicine that keeps workers alive through their most productive periods is very cheap.


And BTW the wages at McDonald's, all $7.25/hr as exorbitant a wage as that is, adds up to 15,000 a year-- or almost exactly the amount that indicates poverty in the US. So you're argument is that poverty is in fact subsidized by the third world, which I'm sure is very comforting to all the working poor.
So what? I earn minimum wage, and I meet the US criteria for poverty, but I still don't give a damn if the truth about economics is comforting or portrays my situation in a postive light. I know, and every poor person in the US knows, that our poverty standards have nothing to do with poverty internationally. Here, death by starvation is almost unheardof, almost no one lacks electricity and potable water, and it's exceedingly rare for people to die of easily treatable illnesses except by accident or in cases of neglect. In the rest of the world this is not the case. And that's the real tragedy of capitalism, not the fate of US working class, no matter how valid their struggle is.


You can challenge anything, if you consider saying "I challenge that" a real challenge. That's all you've done. You've done nothing to point out substantially where the stats on productivity, value added etc, deviate from the actual conditions of production and reproduction.

...

I think you have a very basic confusion between use-value and exchange-value, thinking that somehow the construction of houses in Haiti is more "valuable" than the production of hamburgers in the US. Again, that's not how capitalism functions. Hamburgers and houses are "equal"-- equivalents, or can be made equivalents by the socially necessary labor time involved in their reproduction. That's the only value that capital recognizes.
No, I'm not confused at all. I'm not talking about use value or exchange value, I'm talking about value. Value, which arises from the amount of socially necessary labor objectified in a commodity. Value, of which exchange value is a reflection, not an equivalent. Exchange values are not absolute. If you ship a car produced in China to the US, you can increase its exchange value considerably, but its value has not changed one bit, as the labor required for its production is already complete. The same is true of labor power, a commodity under capitalism, as a worker can exchange their labor value for far greater wages simply by immigrating to the US. This is not simply the result of increased productivity due to advanced production methods. A worker in a Chinese McDonald's earns far less than a worker in an American McDonald's despite the fact that they're basically the same restaurant. Any analysis that suggests the US worker is more productive rejects the LToV, and as such is not Marxian but bourgeois economic with Marxian overtones.

So far, you have not addressed this. Instead, you conflate exchange value with value and demand mountains of evidence to prove you wrong. Apparently it's my burden to prove a negative, i.e. that bourgeois productivity statistics do not reflect reality, rather than your own to prove that they do.


Now you can either deal with some data, or not. It's up to you.

And that's the last I have to say on this, because until you do, it's just wasting time.
I agree that statistical evidence is necessary to show that the first world is exploiting the third. However, it would take several length books to express this properly. Would you be willing to provide a more specific topic for me to work on? To a large extent that's what I've been doing, and have provided statistics where they seem necessary, but you are unsatisfied and I'd like to know where I can help.

[Thug Lessons]

Wait...so Third Worldists only exist on the internet? :lol:
No. The last group I list in that post, RAIM, is an activist organization with chapters in several US cities. And as I mentioned before in my second post, the Maoist-Third Worldist recently also either established (or publicly announced) their own group, the Leading Light Communist Organization.


I agree the third worldists have a lot of valid points. If people are too content or fear that they might lose what things they have, they will often react by legitimising the system. That is why revolutions seldom happen in societies where the people are content.

At the same time, no progressive movement could truly work for progress without taking into account all the peoples of the world. While those in the third world who are starving and struggling to survive the next day should be highest on our priority list, people everywhere deserve a better future, and we should never neglect people because they are coming from the "wrong" region.

All human beings deserve a future worthy of humans, and all human beings who have interest in replacing the current, unsustainable way of life with a sustainable way of life for all people should be involved.

All other ways would only serve to strengthen the various nationalisms.
That doesn't necessarily contradict third worldism in the long term. It's not that third worldists hate the first world or something, but they don't see them as exploited in the Marxist sense and don't see them as revolutionary. Do you really think it's realistic to expect the US or another great power in the first world to "turn" and put the interests of the global poor over their own? It seems more likely that the third world would be able to advance by helping themselves.

[S.Artesian]

S.Artesian, that was a very good post, and one that comes much closer to addressing the central issues that third worldism raises, (though not close enough, but I'll get to that later). I think our discussion is finally getting somewhere. Thanks for helping there, and thanks more generally for taking this issue seriously and addressing it in a sincere and thoughtful way. Also, if you want to see the most important part of my post, skip to the last three paragraphs I wrote.


Yes, exactly, third world agricultural sectors. According to the CIA World Factbook, the US agricultural sector makes up 1.2% of the economy and produces about $170 billion in goods. The Mexican agricultural sector makes up 13.7% of the economy and produces about $200 billion in goods. My reason for pointing this out is not to show that Mexican farmers are more productive, since that's clearly not true, but to show that more people in Mexico are employed in productive labor that produces commodities rather than shuffling around papers or managing people as is often the case in the US.

The same goes for third world industry. There, many more workers are employed in productive industrial labor. It doesn't really demonstrate much to show that they are less productive per capita than US industrial workers, because they make up such a small part of the US workforce, (14% based on previous sources). We're not talking about whether that tiny minority is productive, but the entire US population.


"In no way worse" does not mean "the same". It's a figure of speech that implies, far from being worse, things are actually better. Which is definitely the case in first world labor organizing. While strike-breaking and anti-unionization efforts still exist, companies have much less leeway to use violence and intimidation in breaking strikes and recieve less government support in doing so. That's what I was trying to say.


Well, there's also transportation, which is actually the second-largest expense for US households. Here, the reliance on the third world is clear. In addition to sizeable auto imports from the third world, almost all of of the petroleum products we use for fuel are imported from third world countries.

Now let's look at those other areas you mention. Medical expenses are a tiny fraction the average household budget and can be ignored. Food is largely produced domestically, no doubt, but a good deal is imported too, and more importantly US agriculture is heavily dependent on third world labor. The overwhelming majority of agricultural workers in the US are foreign migrants working for below minimum wage. As for rent and mortgage payments, those has nothing to do with labor power, but the actual production of houses is supported by a large (though not majority) foreign labor component, not to mention all the imports of construction supplies that drive the industry.

More generally, the first world is supplied with raw materials, industrial products and consumer goods by the third world. This makes up the base of my claim that the average first worlder is supplied with commodities created mostly by third world labor.


I see no reason to assume this is true. To do so is dogmatic. And, in fact, history has show that it's not the case. Over the last century wages in the first world have skyrocketed, but only one of those things you list, the decline of industry, (and agriculture, wrongly omitted), has happened. But sectors have risen to pick up the slack during the last 30 years. Wages remain high. Poverty remains low. Unemployment statistics have actually fallen, (the current crisis aside), but as you point out this is largely do to adjustments in the measure during the Reagan era. Will this change eventually? I think so, but until they do, third worldism is correct. Your floundering and grasping at any irrelevant statistic to justify your claims, while ignoring or denying the relevant statistics that refute it, only serves to reinforce this.


Russia was not an advanced country, or at least I can't recall any socialist thinker of the era who believed it was. Lenin explicitly referred to it as backward. Russia was a largely agrarian feudal society with small sectors of industrial development in the large cities. Its citizens were much poorer than those of the UK, France, Germany, and so on. Essentially, it was third world.

As for first world citizens voting for socialist parties, I see little to be impressed with. I'm not too familiar with the socialists in Italy or Greece, but those in France and Spain are social democrats at best. Their policies are concentrated on improving the quality of life for poor people and society in general within their borders, not changing their nation's economic system. The same could be said of Labour in the UK and the various parties claiming to be socialist in the Scandinavian countries. The results of genuinely communist parties is telling. They are only elected to local governments specifically because they do not enjoy enough public support to reach national office except in rare cases.

Now, let's look more closely at the first world's views on socialism, specifically this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8347409.stm). It's a BBC poll about capitalism vs. socialism and the Soviet Union. When you look at the responses on the socialism question, first world countries usually show lower support than third world countries. Of the 12 countries surveyed as to whether they want to change their economic system, France tops the list of supporters, but along with Spain it's the only imperialist nation in the top 6. The bottom 3 are the UK, US and Germany, the largest industrial producers in the first world besides Japan.

When we look at opinion on a genuine socialist experiment, the USSR, however, that's when the difference becomes clearer. All of the advanced nations see the fall of the USSR as a good thing by overwhelming margins, 75-85% to 5-15%. In the third world, it's often the exact opposite. Chile and Nigera also show majorities seeing it as a good thing, though not nearly as large as those in the first world, while many third world nations show strong majorities seeing the collapse as a bad thing. Taken together, what we can draw from this is that while they may occasionally be sympathic towards the ideals of socialism, they are uniformly hostile to socialism in practice. The third world, on the other hand, is not always anti-capitalist, but they are not willing to dismiss socialist nations on that basis.


They're certainly eviable in comparison to the complete defeat of the revolutionary forces by reaction and opportunism. Socialism in the third world was far from perfect and many mistakes were made, but unlike socialism in the first world it created the space where a communist society could arise given the correct political and social development.


The point of that was to demonstrate the uselesses of taking profit creation as a measure of productivity.




Third worldism does not claim that each underpaid third world worker subsidizes the first world. This takes place only when they are directly involved with supplying the first world in the form of commodites. But in a larger sense, the first world is holding the third world back through imperialism. The exploitation of the third world's labor and natural resources is the largest and most glaring form of this, but far from the only one. The first world keeps a monopoly on its advanced technology through the use of patents, high prices for capital goods, and the brain drain. And that's not to mention military intervention in the third world and a host of other measures that help to keep them undeveloped.

As for the reproduction of the laborer, I do not assume that everything a worker buys is necessary. Most jobs in the first world could be performed by workers with a lower standard of living. Why is advanced medicine, for example, necessary? It disproportionally benefits the elderly who are already retired or on the verge of retirement to begin with. The medicine that keeps workers alive through their most productive periods is very cheap.


So what? I earn minimum wage, and I meet the US criteria for poverty, but I still don't give a damn if the truth about economics is comforting or portrays my situation in a postive light. I know, and every poor person in the US knows, that our poverty standards have nothing to do with poverty internationally. Here, death by starvation is almost unheardof, almost no one lacks electricity and potable water, and it's exceedingly rare for people to die of easily treatable illnesses except by accident or in cases of neglect. In the rest of the world this is not the case. And that's the real tragedy of capitalism, not the fate of US working class, no matter how valid their struggle is.


No, I'm not confused at all. I'm not talking about use value or exchange value, I'm talking about value. Value, which arises from the amount of socially necessary labor objectified in a commodity. Value, of which exchange value is a reflection, not an equivalent. Exchange values are not absolute. If you ship a car produced in China to the US, you can increase its exchange value considerably, but its value has not changed one bit, as the labor required for its production is already complete. The same is true of labor power, a commodity under capitalism, as a worker can exchange their labor value for far greater wages simply by immigrating to the US. This is not simply the result of increased productivity due to advanced production methods. A worker in a Chinese McDonald's earns far less than a worker in an American McDonald's despite the fact that they're basically the same restaurant. Any analysis that suggests the US worker is more productive rejects the LToV, and as such is not Marxian but bourgeois economic with Marxian overtones.

So far, you have not addressed this. Instead, you conflate exchange value with value and demand mountains of evidence to prove you wrong. Apparently it's my burden to prove a negative, i.e. that bourgeois productivity statistics do not reflect reality, rather than your own to prove that they do.


I agree that statistical evidence is necessary to show that the first world is exploiting the third. However, it would take several length books to express this properly. Would you be willing to provide a more specific topic for me to work on? To a large extent that's what I've been doing, and have provided statistics where they seem necessary, but you are unsatisfied and I'd like to know where I can help.

First off, nobody argued that advanced capitalism does not exploit the less developed countries. Third-worldists argue, however, that the entire working class of the developed countries is a labor-aristocracy. That's what was said in the tract you produced in the OP. Entire means entire, total, all, complete. It means the workers who worked in the Iowa Ham plant and saw it sold to Cargill, and to Gillette, and to someone else, with their wage going from $18/hr plus benefits to $6.60/hr with no benefits are a labor aristocracy. Entire means African-American workers making 70% of white workers are a labor aristocracy. Entire means all people making minimum wage and less are a labor aristocracy. That's what entire means.

If you want to say that capitalism is antithetical to social and economic development of the less developed areas, that it absorbs, and adapts, and utilizes brutal methods to maximize profitability, then there's no argument. But that's not what third worldism is about. It says workers in the advanced countries are privileged, bribed, and are not even value producers in the circuits of capital.

We're not talking about country vs. country here, we are talking about class and class.

Secondly, I don't conflate value with exchange value, or rather I do, because that's what Marx does. Exchange value is the value of the commodity as a commodity, as a product of a specific social relation of labor called wage-labor. Marx, for the most part, does not distinguish value from exchange value in his investigations of surplus value. He uses value to mean, at every point in his iterations of times of circulation and times of production, exchange value. There are times when Marx uses "value" to mean the unity of use-value and exchange value, but that is not a distinguishing of value from exchange value, but its subsumption, its "expanded reproduction" so to speak.

So like I said you have a very basic confusion of use value and exchange value, a confusion that is made manifest when you talk about the "larger" "productive sectors" of "third world countries."

Those sectors may be larger, but they are hardly more productive. They may produce more value, and even more volume, but they are not producing more value or more volume per unit of input, which is what counts for the production of value.

China's agricultural output is greater than that of the US, not to mention South Korea, or France. So what? The numbers engaged in agricultural production mean that the overall productivity of the society is held back, restrained, by the tethering of labor to the land. This is exactly one of the signature characteristics of "underdevelopment," a problem that China has yet to overcome; that has resisted the various 3rd world land reform schemes.

In regard to your "import sources," you need to recognize that the US and the advanced countries are in general "export for reimport" economies, shipping out capital goods, designs, software, equipment, in order to reimport process product for finishing. Doesn't mean the bourgeoisie of the advanced countries don't exploit the labor of the less developed countries, it means precisely the opposite. But it also means that the bourgeoisie of the developed countries have to exploit their own workers in order to offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall due to the "overweighted" technical component of "finishing" production in the advanced countries. And that is what the US has done since 1980, and why conditions for workers in the US have not been "stable" since the end of WW2, but showed real improvement between 1945-1970, and a real deterioration in the numbers employed, the portion of national income, etc. from 1979 on.

Average percent change in hourly compensation costs [costs, not simply wages, not benefits] for US production workers measured 4.4 percent 1975-2008, the lowest among all developed and many, many less developed countries, with every five year period since 1980 being below that overall average.

Now you can regard as suspect all the data on the slowing of US workers compensation, on the fact that US workers compensation is below that of every country of the European Union except for the countries of the former COMECON block; you candoubt that income has been redistributed upwards ever since 1980, but then on what basis can you claim that all US, or all European workers, all Canadian workers, all Australian workers, all Japanese are a "labor aristocracy?"

Exactly what is the criteria for a labor aristocracy? According to the 3rd worldists, it's the fact that "super-exploitation" of the less developed areas amounts to an income transfer to workers in the advanced countries. However, where is the evidence of such an income transfer? Was there an income transfer to the autoworkers in GM North America from GM's operations in China? Is that why autoworkers are being forced to accept wage cuts, severe downsizing, and have to fund their own medical plans?

I used to ask the so-called "Lenin-Imperialism" advocates-- where are the superprofits? Where is the super rate of profit in capitalism's operations in less developed countries?

Now I ask, where's the wage subsidy? Where's the benefit subsidy for US workers when benefits have been steadily eroded for 30 years; when givebacks, asset-stripping, tiered-wage structures have moved income away from labor and into the corporate profit sector?

BTW, medical expenses amount to 7% of the average gross income of the overall population in the US, and that's not insignificant.

You make a claim about sizeable auto imports from the third world-- can you quantify that? Can you provide any numbers on the portion of value added to autos imported into the US by third world workers. I'm sure it can be done, but to do it, you are going to have to rely on those very same statistical sources that you see no reason to accept. Or do you have some other sources for making that claim? I personally don't know how much value added to US imported autos comes from less developed countries, but I do know that as of right now China exports of autos to the US are practically nil... doesn't mean it won't change. Just means you need to be a bit more specific in what you claim to be the case, otherwise people will be inclined to say you don't know what you are talking about.

Petroleum is an interesting issue, since the US imports the largest volume from Canada, with Mexico second, Nigeria 3rd, Saudi Arabia fourth, Venezuela fifth. And I wouldn't consider Canada, or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or the UAE third world countries.

And what those imports amount to in reality, is the real reason for the growth in the US trade deficit since 2002. If you take US trade figures and adjust them for what is called "related-party" trading, where a US corporation imports goods from a foreign subsidiary, you find that the increased price of oil between 2002 and 2006 accounts for the total real US trade deficit in that period.

Now there is no doubt that workers in Nigeria, Venezuela, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia and Canada are exploited in this process, but the "transfer" is going the other way-- the "transfer" moves from the US to these countries through the oil exchange, with the international oil companies, of course, raking in profit hand over fist.

As for the poll from the BBC you produce, did you bother to actually read it? 43 percent of the French responding said capitalism is fatally flawed. That's a higher percentage than in Brazil or Mexico.

As for the demise of the fSU, note the numbers in Poland and Germany. That doesn't mean the demise of the fSU was a good thing, , but it does indicate that those who were under the fSU's economic and political sway are so embittered by the experience that they prefer capitalism. Can't think of any greater indictment of the fSU than that. You want to call the USSR "socialism in practice"? That's a whole other thread, and an even more intense argument.

What you still do not come to grips with is the basis for higher wages, which is historically determined by the costs of reproducing the labor in any particular country; costs which are shaped by the degree of capitalist development itself in amplifying the productivity of labor, in aggrandizing greater relative portions of the labor time-- which is why, in capitalist terms, the person producing hamburgers-- either at an IBP slaughterhouse, or processing plant, or McDonald's is in fact yielding more [I]value-- more surplus value captured in the commodity as exchange value-- than the worker paid less building houses in Haiti.

The different costs and requirements for the reproduction of the laborer are the reason the wage structures are different between China and the US. Are you trying to claim that the wages of US workers at McDonald's are subsidized by the wages of Chinese workers in China's McDonald's? If that's the claim, you need to show it. And you need to show how much surplus profit McDonald's extracts from China as opposed to profits extracted from all other sources, and how and why McDonald's in the US distributes that surplus profit to, not just its employees, but its franchises to pay their employees. And you might want to show how that transfer occurred even before McDonald's ever opened a restaurant in China.

I think it's an undertaking that anyone who is serious about income transfers and wage subsidies should be willing to undertake. If you're not so willing, then again, you are making claims based on what you feel is right, not what actually occurs in capitalism.

Now regarding your last bit about lower poverty in the advanced countries, better utilities, etc. that's not the issue. Your claim, however, as a 3rd worldist is that those better utilities in the advanced countries, those greater numbers of schools, doctors, ONLY exist due to the lack thereof in the less developed countries; that they exist as "bribery" and privilege of workers in the advanced countries.

I don't think that's why they exist. They exist because a market was created for them by capitalism in its extraction and reproduction of surplus value. They exist because they, the utilities, the schools, the clean water, the infrastructure sustained a rate of profitability of production of the components used in making that infrastructure, those utilities, those schools that water. And when that profitability deteriorates, as it has, when it deteriorates due to the conflict between accumulation and profit, then those schools, infrastructure, all that bribery will be chopped up and used for kindling in the inferno of decomposition we know as advanced capitalism, regardless of the profits "looted" from the less developed countries.

[turquino]

Value is transfered through international trade. The transfer of value is hidden in the prices paid for products. Products made in imperialist countries are overpriced relative to values due to their elevated prices of production (owing to the wage component of the cost of production, rather than a larger total capital). When products of the imperialist country and underdevloped country exchange, the transfer of value is concealed, but the outcome is a larger social product than otherwise possible for the purchaser of the underpriced product, and smaller for the purchaser of the overpriced. In this sense it is an exploitative relationship which the imperialist nation as a whole benfits in. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to conclude that a large portion of the nation's working class is implicated, and that it is an objective basis for an observed lack of international solidarity.

[Sasha]

note: i know jack shit about economics.

but does an classic marxists view still aply too overpricing, i mean, isnt branding added value that happens in the first world.

is there at ol still an conection between the produced value in the 3th world (actual material/labor costs) and that in the first world (branding etc)

[S.Artesian]

Value is transfered through international trade. The transfer of value is hidden in the prices paid for products. Products made in imperialist countries are overpriced relative to values due to their elevated prices of production (owing to the wage component of the cost of production, rather than a larger total capital). When products of the imperialist country and underdevloped country exchange, the transfer of value is concealed, but the outcome is a larger social product than otherwise possible for the purchaser of the underpriced product, and smaller for the purchaser of the overpriced. In this sense it is an exploitative relationship which the imperialist nation as a whole benfits in. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to conclude that a large portion of the nation's working class is implicated, and that it is an objective basis for an observed lack of international solidarity.

Except the claim is made that the superior productivity in the developing countries is indicated by trade deficits of the advanced countries with the developing countries. Consequently the flow of value in the trade process is going the other way.

I've read this argument before about the prices of goods developed in the advanced countries being overpriced because of the wage component. First of all, such an argument ignores what Ricardo proved, and Marx subsequently reconfirmed over 150 years ago-- that the prices of commodities are not dependent upon the wages paid to the producers of the commodities. The prices are the monetary representations of value, and value depends upon the relation of the means of production to the labor component of production. The value depends on the necessary time of reproduction. It is more than possible that higher wages actually produce lower-priced commodities.

Secondly, the claim that the wage component of production in advanced countries leads to "overpricing" ignores one crucial fact-- that production workers wages amount to less than 10% of the average costs of production in US industry. Even adding on 40% for benefits [which is pretty generous given what's happened over the last decade], we're talking about 14% of the total cost of production...on average. In the more capital intensive industries like petroleum refining, the percentage drops to 5 percent, and in the really advanced sectors, like semiconductor fabrication it gets down to 2 percent and can go even lower. I don't think there's any basis for arguing that the wages paid to workers in the US are the basis for "overpricing."

We need to go a bit deeper into this than simply say there is "unequal exchange" based on a high wage structure.

The way the value transfer works, and it works to the benefit of the bourgeoisie of the developed countries, not the "entire nation," is that the advanced countries produce more sophisticated commodities; commodities containing, and requiring, a greater amount of socially necessary labor time for their reproduction-- like commercial aircraft, locomotives, or... let's say advanced microprocessors as opposed to bulk commodity production of DRAM chips.


These commodities when exchanged with the commodities of the less advanced countries represent another iteration of the famous "scissors crisis"-- the split between the city and countryside, between the prices of finished, industrial goods and the rural producers grains, feeds, vegetables, meat. The divergence between the raised prices of the industrial goods and the cheapening of the agricultural products as agricultural efficiency improves is the opening of the scissors, and is indeed, one of the critical mechanisms of capitalist accumulation, as it moves value off the countryside and into the urban areas.

But there is no need for "unequal exchange" in this process. Doesn't mean that "unequal exchange" doesn't happen between advanced and less advanced. Certainly it does, but then unequal exchanges happen in all markets.. including those where advanced countries deal with each other. In fact, behind this screen of unequal exchange is a very real process of sorting out, rationing, distributing the available "social" profit, and of establishing a general rate of profit.

Every capitalist goes into the market looking to buy low and sell high, to beggar his or her neighbor. But the success of such beggaring depends on the actual necessary labor time of reproduction embedded in the commodities with which one capitalist hopes to beggar the others.

[RGacky3]

When products of the imperialist country and underdevloped country exchange, the transfer of value is concealed, but the outcome is a larger social product than otherwise possible for the purchaser of the underpriced product, and smaller for the purchaser of the overpriced. In this sense it is an exploitative relationship which the imperialist nation as a whole benfits in. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to conclude that a large portion of the nation's working class is implicated, and that it is an objective basis for an observed lack of international solidarity.

Your ignoring a bunch of different factors, one the reason the product is underpriced is because there is'nt the market for that product within the sellers country at the price there is in the buyers country, it has to do with supply and demand (which has to do with monitary value rather than social value), keep in mind many imperialistic countries are also huge exporters, that has nothing to do with it.

The lack of international solidarity for the working class in the first world is the same as the lack in the third world, they have their old lives to worry about, also, add to that tons and tons of propeganda, and there you have the real basis.

[28350]

...used obnoxious alternate spellings like "womyn" and "humynity"...

Sort of like Amerikkka and U$A? I hope Shubel Morgan knows that when they use Microsoft text-to-speech for their shitty animated videos with bad techno, it comes out as "you-dollar-sign-ey," and that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Lin-Biaoism-Third-Worldism comes out as ASFGHDFGHJDFGHASDFASDF

[Thug Lessons]

words
OK, first on the LToV.

You are dead wrong about Marx not differentiating between value and exchange value. He specifically does, in his first chapter of Capital. And besides that, Marx was quite open about his theory value being based on Smith's and Smith makes the difference between actual and exchange value quite clear, in the fifth chapter of his own great work, The Wealth of Nations.


Though at distant places, there is no regular proportion between the real and the money price of commodities, yet the merchant who carries goods from the one to the other has nothing to consider but their money price, or the difference between the quantity of silver for which he buys them, and that for which he is likely to sell them. Half an ounce of silver at Canton in China may command a greater quantity both of labour and of the necessaries and conveniences of life than an ounce at London. A commodity, therefore, which sells for half an ounce of silver at Canton may there be really dearer, of more real importance to the man who possesses it there, than a commodity which sells for an ounce at London is to the man who possesses it at London. If a London merchant, however, can buy at Canton for half an ounce of silver, a commodity which he can afterwards sell at London for an ounce, he gains a hundred per cent by the bargain, just as much as if an ounce of silver was at London exactly of the same value as at Canton.
When we look at everyday relations of production, and especially when Marx did it in the 19th century, exchange value is the most relevant and useful metric to use, since actual value is not quantifiable so easily or exactly, but that does not in any way diminish the reality or importance of the distinction between exchange value and actual value. Again, this was dealt with by Smith.

As it is the nominal or money price of goods, therefore, which finally determines the prudence or imprudence of all purchases and sales, and thereby regulates almost the whole business of common life in which price is concerned, we cannot wonder that it should have been so much more attended to than the real price.
Marx produced an extended commentary on and criticism of Smith in his later years. I've only read sections of it, and you seem to know more about Marx's writings than me, so maybe you've read something I haven't and if so please show me. But I highly doubt this is going to happen, because Marxian economics is based on the labor theory of value, not the money theory of value used by neoclassical economists. The fact that you have to claim otherwise to criticize third worldism underscores how non-Marxian and bourgeois these criticisms are.


Next, on the claim that all first world workers are exploited.

The third worldism you're talking about is specifically Maoism-Third Worldism. These are not the claims of earlier third worldists like MIM or J. Sakai. However those do fall closer to my views, so I'll address them.

First let's clarify. Third worldists don't say that nobody in the first world is exploited. Obviously there are some groups, like prison laborers, migrant workers, those who are illegally paid less than minimum wage and so on that may be exploited in the technical sense. But these groups make up a tiny minority of the US workforce. They are too small to be a viable revolutionary force and besides, with the exception of migrant laborers it would be far easier for members of these populations to integrate with mainstream US society than to overthrow capitalism.

Now, to your main point, that perhaps not all first world workers are unexploited, especially oppressed groups like American blacks, I'd say this rather reasonable. Plenty of people in the US suffer and stuggle to make ends meet, so perhaps some of them are actually exploited.

At this point, it becomes useful to look at the US class structure. I'll do this from two perspectives. First, occupation, and second, income.


Labor force - by occupation:
farming, forestry, and fishing: 0.7%
manufacturing, extraction, transportation, and crafts: 20.3%
managerial, professional, and technical: 37.3%
sales and office: 24.2%
other services: 17.6%
What immediately jumps out here is the size of the petit-bourgeoisie. More than a third of US workers are, in fact, managers, professionals, and technicians. In other words, exactly the groups that Marx defines as non-productive. This group easily outnumbers industrial and farm workers combined. Next, we have sales, office and other services. A full 11% (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb3.txt) work in sales, which again is by definition non-productive, with another 8% in financial service and "information". Already 56% of the US workforce can be classified as non-productive. It's only the remaining minority of the population that can be disputed. Most likely this simple analysis underestimates the number of US workers non-productive by definition, as much of office work and "other services" do not actually produce commodities.

Your claims about the incredible productivity of first world industry aren't relevant to these people. Has technology here advanced so far as to make food service or clerical workers super-productive as well? Have the laws of economics changed as to make managers, professionals and salespeople productive? Until you resolve this, the best you can claim is that the small minority engaged in industrial and agricultural production are exploited, and the other 85% live off their backs and the backs of the third world.

Now, here's income (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032009/hhinc/new06_000.htm).

Household income:
$0-$14,999: 13.0%
$15,000-$29,999: 17.2%
$30,000-$44,999: 15.3%
$45,000-$59,999: 13.0%
$60,000-$74,999: 10.0%
$75,000-$100,000: 10.2%
$100,000-$200,000: 18.4%
>$200,000: 3.8%

What this shows is what everyone's known for the last 60 years, i.e. that the US is a middle class rather than a working class country. Only 13% of households earn less than $15K, and most of those are simply due to not working full time. The total living on less that $30K, a reasonable metric for what might be considered working class here, is 30.2%, which is in fact less than those earning more than $75K (32.4%), a reasonable metric for being wealthy here.

What do I take from this? Perhaps there are some people in the US, even outside of those groups I mentioned earlier, could be called poor and exploited, but they are a minority. Most likely an extreme minority. The US is a country characterized by comfort and wealth, and most of its citizens have no reason to rebel or even push for a non-violent change of economic systems. Even if we accept that a certain portion of the lower classes are exploited, say 20 or 30 percent, they are not numerous enough to ever become the dominant political force. In future investigations of productivity and non-productivity in the US, we may find that there is a significant group of people that are technically exploited, but we will never find a group that is revolutionary until wages are reduced.


Now for your demands that I show evidence of an "income transfer".

This is just a misunderstanding of third worldism. Nobody is claiming that the wages of every first world worker are subsidized by the wages of every first world worker. That's clearly nonsense. There is no income transfer. What third worldist do claim is that first world wages are bouyed by imperialism. Without a massive transfer of value from the third world to first world capital, US wages would drop precipitously. They would not drop to zero, but they would drop enough to cause a noticeable decline in the standard of living, and industry would have to be re-tooled to bring more workers back into the fold of productive labor. In addition, many of the comforts that first worlders enjoy, most conspicuously access to consumer goods, are a product of third world labor.

How is this bouying of wages accomplished? The most obvious cause, which I've touched on before, is through monopolizing first world labor. Immigration regulations in first world countries are very strict. The US permits only 700,000 immigrants per year excluding those employed in occupations that the US needs. Many more people would like to immigrate to the US than this, but they are stopped because increasing the labor supply would result in more labor competition and falling wages. There is also a great deal of partnership with the bourgeoisie. As we've seen, the employment structure in the US is absolutely absurd, and more than a third of the population exists to do nothing besides help the bourgeoisie accomplish its goals and tend to its needs. And, of course, the US working class has won its position for itself. Through the struggles of the last century, the population managed to secure various concessions from government and business that it effectively lifted them up above the level of ordinary workers. The ruling classes here are so rich they can afford to throw a couple bones.

There are probably more reasons that I'm not thinking of, but in any case it's not nearly so difficult as you're making it out to be to explain how high first world wages are dependent on low third world wages.


Finally, a few specific points that don't fall into those three categories.


Now regarding your last bit about lower poverty in the advanced countries, better utilities, etc. that's not the issue. Your claim, however, as a 3rd worldist is that those better utilities in the advanced countries, those greater numbers of schools, doctors, ONLY exist due to the lack thereof in the less developed countries; that they exist as "bribery" and privilege of workers in the advanced countries.
On the contrary, it's precisely the issue. All the rest of this stuff we're talking is just Marxist mumbo-jumbo that the workers could care less about. What people worry about on a day-to-day basis are questions like "Will I be able to feed my family next week? Can I pay rent? If I get sick, will I be able to go to a doctor? Will my kids have a better life than I did?" If capitalism actually existed in such a way that everyone could live a lifestyle like that of the first world working class, communism would go nowhere, and in fact it wouldn't have to. All the problems of society could be resolved through social democracy and the like. The reason communism has to exist, and reason third worldism is so important, is that billions of people around the world are suffering from extreme poverty, unlike almost anyone in the US and Europe.

There's also another point in this quote, about whether the first world has education, utilities, infrastructure and so on only because the third world doesn't. That's definitely false. There is greater development in the first world, and to a certain extent it does derive from more advanced productive forces. There's no doubt about that. However, there is a strong tendency to overstate the importance of technology and historical interia rather than wealth to describe this. Development doesn't occur unless there's finance to back it. Capital produced through imperialism has financed development in the first world. Is that even in dispute that that's happened to some extent?


BTW, medical expenses amount to 7% of the average gross income of the overall population in the US, and that's not insignificant.
I believe it's actually lower as a percentage of the average household budgets, but that could be due to the fact that people end up with unpaid medical bills from emergency room visits.


You make a claim about sizeable auto imports from the third world-- can you quantify that?
Probably but I won't bother unless you're very interested. I'll concede it's definitely a minority compared with both domestic auto production and imports from advanced nations. However, this is complicated somewhat based on imports of third world-produced auto parts.


Petroleum is an interesting issue, since the US imports the largest volume from Canada, with Mexico second, Nigeria 3rd, Saudi Arabia fourth, Venezuela fifth. And I wouldn't consider Canada, or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or the UAE third world countries.
Canada still makes up a minority of Oil imports, and Kuwait and the UAE tiny and miniscule minorities respectively. Saudi Arabia is classified as a middle-income country and is slightly richer than Poland and slightly poorer than Portugal. I'd classify them as third world but there's a lot of problems with their class structure as well.


As for the poll from the BBC you produce, did you bother to actually read it? 43 percent of the French responding said capitalism is fatally flawed. That's a higher percentage than in Brazil or Mexico.
They're the absolute exception, and all the other first world countries except Spain are at the bottom of the list. I specifically mentioned France as an exception when I said first world workers had abandoned socialism. I have no doubt they'd be a center of European revolutionary action if first world workers ever became proletarian, but until that time the farthest I'd expect them to go would be nationalization and so forth.

[S.Artesian]

I'm dead wrong? Show me where I'm dead wrong in volume 1. While you're attempting to do that, I'll show you where I'm dead right:




If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.
Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values.
We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value. But if we abstract from their use value, there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its form.
A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. quantity of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours.
Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.
We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour time socially necessary for its production.9 Each individual commodity, in this connexion, is to be considered as an average sample of its class.10 Commodities, therefore, in which equal quantities of labour are embodied, or which can be produced in the same time, have the same value. The value of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the labour time necessary for the production of the one is to that necessary for the production of the other. “As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour time.”

Follow the logic here. A use value is a quality, a specific attribute of utility. Exchange value is a quantity based on the common element, social element, that in fact makes them exchangeable, homogeneous, an element called abstract labor time. And "When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values." OK with this? The substance that makes them exchangeable, gives them exchange value is what makes them values. Exchange value is the only form in which the value of a commodity can be expressed.

Marx even entitles part 3 of Chapter 1 "The Form of Value or Exchange-Value"



When occupying the position of equivalent in the equation of value, the coat ranks qualitatively as the equal of the linen, as something of the same kind, because it is value. In this position it is a thing in which we see nothing but value, or whose palpable bodily form represents value. Yet the coat itself, the body of the commodity, coat, is a mere use value. A coat as such no more tells us it is value, than does the first piece of linen we take hold of. This shows that when placed in value-relation to the linen, the coat signifies more than when out of that relation, just as many a man strutting about in a gorgeous uniform counts for more than when in mufti.
In the production of the coat, human labour power, in the shape of tailoring, must have been actually expended. Human labour is therefore accumulated in it. In this aspect the coat is a depository of value, but though worn to a thread, it does not let this fact show through. And as equivalent of the linen in the value equation, it exists under this aspect alone, counts therefore as embodied value, as a body that is value. A, for instance, cannot be “your majesty” to B, unless at the same time majesty in B’s eyes assumes the bodily form of A, and, what is more, with every new father of the people, changes its features, hair, and many other things besides.

Exactly what is Marx talking about when he's talking about equivalents, and "equations" of commodity values? He's describing the social relation that makes them exchangeable. As Marx demonstrates in the very language of his exploration, exchange value is the value of a commodity as a vehicle for accumulation. Exchange value is value in motion, in operation so to speak.

You, in your quote from Adam Smith and your follow-on comments are confusing exchange value with market price.

Marx's regard for Adam Smith, a regard that is characterized by a thorough grasp of Smith's limitations, is in regard to Smith "breaking the hold" of the Physiocrats who believed that only agricultural labor, producing a surplus, could rightly be considered productive labor. Smith saw that all labor yielding a surplus product, a surplus value, was productive labor, as value was the organizing principle of the capitalist economy.
As for your numbers on income, they would be fine and dandy if 1) poverty equaled exploitation 2) if the poverty equaled exploitation and the poverty threshold for a family of four was $15,000, but it isn't. For 2009, it was app $22,000. 3) if workers and poor had to be a numeric majority in society in order to have revolutionary potential.

You seem to think I'm arguing that advanced capitalism does not create thousands of unproductive jobs. That is not my argument at all. Indeed it does, and it does so to protect its property arrangements, in one way or another. But it can pay for those jobs only because of the productivity remaining in its organization of industrial production. Now perhaps you want to argue that "85 %" of the population is living off the "3rd world." So here's what I suggest you do, take your income numbers for the US, the EU, Canada, Australia, Norway, New Zealand, Japan, and take the incomes of the top 85%, give it a dollar figure and see how much value has to be extracted from the 3rd world countries of Africa, Asia [leave out South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, as they are hardly underdeveloped countries]... and then find that value being extracted. If 85% of the developed world is a parasite on the 3rd world, then we should certainly be able to find those huge streams of value being taken from the 3rd world. And we need to reconcile those huge streams of value with the total output of these 3rd world countries, minus the amounts kept for reinvestment, consumption, etc.

When I stated that the extreme and greater poverty in the less developed countries was not the issue, I meant that there was no argument about the extreme and greater poverty, not that such poverty did not matter. There is not now, and never has been any dispute about the greater poverty.

When you say this:



There's also another point in this quote, about whether the first world has education, utilities, infrastructure and so on only because the third world doesn't. That's definitely false. There is greater development in the first world, and to a certain extent it does derive from more advanced productive forces. There's no doubt about that. However, there is a strong tendency to overstate the importance of technology and historical interia rather than wealth to describe this. Development doesn't occur unless there's finance to back it. Capital produced through imperialism has financed development in the first world. Is that even in dispute that that's happened to some extent?

you actually make sense. Of course imperialism, advanced capitalist penetration of less developed countries has financed development in the advanced countries. Of course profit has been extracted. Again it's not at issue because no one's arguing against that. That has happened to an extent, and is happening right now. The argument is about expanding the notion of "labor aristocracy" to include almost all the workers in the advanced countries. The argument is about how [and to/from whom] capitalism aggrandizes and distributes profit, not that it does aggrandize and distribute profit.

What counts, for Marx, is the "logic" of capital-- that its historical origins where the conditions of labor must be organized as private property in order aggrandize surplus value by organizing labor as wage labor contains what he calls its own "immanent critique--" that by its very structure, its very need for accumulation, capital creates and recreates the conflict between the accumulated means of production, and the relations of production which are accumulation of value, extraction of surplus value, profitability of production. In so doing, the very structure of capital compels the working class to confront and overthrow that private property in the means of production.

For the proletariat in the advanced countries, which account for more than half of all industrial value in production globally, to be not capable of becoming revolutionary, we would have to be living under a system that doesn't produce value, doesn't produce commodities, that wasn't capitalism to begin with.

[anticap]

When I first began to familiarize myself with these terms, I was under the impression that Marx uses "value" and "exchange-value" interchangeably.

Then I came under the impression that by "value" he means SNLT and that exchange-value is an expression of this.

Now, after reading you two, I'm under the impression that no one really knows which of these is meant by Marx.

It's a shame that this discussion is interspersed within the Third-Worldist discussion, because I'd like to see it split off into a dedicated thread.

[S.Artesian]

When I first began to familiarize myself with these terms, I was under the impression that Marx uses "value" and "exchange-value" interchangeably.

Then I came under the impression that by "value" he means SNLT and that exchange-value is an expression of this.

Now, after reading you two, I'm under the impression that no one really knows which of these is meant by Marx.

It's a shame that this discussion is interspersed within the Third-Worldist discussion, because I'd like to see it split off into a dedicated thread.

Marx does use the terms value and exchange value interchangeably. The value of a commodity is the labor-time embedded in its production. This is what makes the commodities exchangeable. The realized value in the process of exchange is determined by the socially necessary time of reproduction.

Specific social relations are necessary for labor to be expressed as labor-time, and to be the medium of exchange. Required is the opposition of the conditions of labor, the means of production and subsistence, to labor itself. That opposition is realized in the private property, the ownership of the means of production and subsistence, which dispossesses labor, direct producers and direct production, from these means. Then labor only has use for the laborer as a means of exchange. It is this fundamental, primal exchange value that is the basis for the appropriation of surplus labor, surplus labor time, and the expression of labor-time as value. It is the basis for capital. Consequently Marx states that exchange value is the only form that value can be expressed and made manifest under capitalism.

Hope that helps.

[S.Artesian]

I was going to ask TL to provide some data on US imports from "3rd world" countries [and to include a list of those countries, or at least the top 10 sources of the imports].

And since advanced capitalism is not confined to the US, I was going to ask him to do the same for Japan, Australia, Canada, and the European Union.

But you know what? It's not necessary, because in looking through the original posts, I came across this from TL:


The difference is that in most cases, (the exception being the lumpen in prisons and scattered groups of migrant workers, and most likely a few individuals who are illegally paid below the minimum wage), this relationship does not result in a transfer of surplus value from the worker to capital.

This statement is just plain ignorant. Anyone who believes that doesn't know anything about industrial capitalism in the US and the real movement of profits in this economy.

[Thug Lessons]

I'm going to address this first instead of your previous post first because it's more relevant.


Marx does use the terms value and exchange value interchangeably. The value of a commodity is the labor-time embedded in its production. This is what makes the commodities exchangeable. The realized value in the process of exchange is determined by the socially necessary time of reproduction.
Exactly. I couldn't put it better myself. The realized exchange value of labor in the first world is greater than that in the third world. That does not mean that the socially necessary labor time objectified in first world commodities is greater, or that shipping commodities from the third world to the first instills greater value. It simply means that market forces in the first world, especially supply and demand, push those exchange values higher.

The simple fact that people will pay money for a good or service does not mean it creates value, or that higher prices mean higher value. People will pay exhoribitant sums to doctors and lawyers, but Marx specifically identified these occupations as non-productive.

Now on to your previous post.

You, in your quote from Adam Smith and your follow-on comments are confusing exchange value with market price.No, market price and exchange value are the same thing. They are a quantitative relationship in which commodities are exchanged for money, (or other commodities, for that matter). What distinguishes Marxian from bourgeois economics is that the Marxians realize that that this price or exchange value is a function of socially necessary labor time. That does not mean that exchange values are independent of market forces, but simply that those market forces are acting on something inherent rather than conjuring price out of thin air.

In any case, if you think exchange value and market price are different things, that doesn't really help your arguments much. What do you think these bourgeois statistics you're using are based on? Market price, the only thing that matters to bourgeois economists, or some abstract exchange value, which they explicitly reject?


As for your numbers on income, they would be fine and dandy if 1) poverty equaled exploitation 2) if the poverty equaled exploitation and the poverty threshold for a family of four was $15,000, but it isn't. For 2009, it was app $22,000. 3) if workers and poor had to be a numeric majority in society in order to have revolutionary potential.Let's take these one by one. Well, poverty doesn't equal exploitation, but it engender revolutionary motivations. First world workers are, in fact, content to toil with their golden chains. As for poverty rate in the US, as of 2008 it was 13.2% (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2008/highlights.html), and it's even lower in Western Europe. Finally, revolutionary potential should, at least to some extent, incorporate a notion of workers being able to carry out a successful revolution. Perhaps some workers might, (and in fact they do), become revolutionary in the first world, but this will go precisely nowhere until the poor make up a majority. The only reason communism has any hope of succeeding against the financial and military might of the ruling class is through numerical superiority.


You seem to think I'm arguing that advanced capitalism does not create thousands of unproductive jobs. That is not my argument at all. Indeed it does, and it does so to protect its property arrangements, in one way or another. But it can pay for those jobs only because of the productivity remaining in its organization of industrial production. Now perhaps you want to argue that "85 %" of the population is living off the "3rd world." So here's what I suggest you do, take your income numbers for the US, the EU, Canada, Australia, Norway, New Zealand, Japan, and take the incomes of the top 85%, give it a dollar figure and see how much value has to be extracted from the 3rd world countries of Africa, Asia [leave out South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, as they are hardly underdeveloped countries]... and then find that value being extracted. If 85% of the developed world is a parasite on the 3rd world, then we should certainly be able to find those huge streams of value being taken from the 3rd world. And we need to reconcile those huge streams of value with the total output of these 3rd world countries, minus the amounts kept for reinvestment, consumption, etc.You've done a good job dancing around the point I'm making here. The industrial production of the first world does not constitute a majority of wealth in the imperialist nations. As we've seen, it makes up a tiny minority, about 20% in both the US and Europe. First world industrial workers make up an even smaller share of the the total workforce. What's left is a huge swath of unproductive workers, and their wealth is obviously coming from somewhere. Commodity production must be undervalued by bourgeois economic standards, and the only question is where. Is it the tiny first world industrial and agricultural sectors, or the vast third world proletariat and peasantry? An in-depth statistical analysis would be useful here, but honestly Occam's razor is sufficient.


For the proletariat in the advanced countries, which account for more than half of all industrial value in production globally, to be not capable of becoming revolutionary, we would have to be living under a system that doesn't produce value, doesn't produce commodities, that wasn't capitalism to begin with.The first world does not make up the majority of industrial production, as I've already shown. The top five third world economies alone equal the industrial production of the US and EU combined. The only reason it appears differently is because the sources you use calculate production as a product of raw GDP rather than GDP(PPP), the former of which overstates the wealth of the first world.


stuff about how i'm ignorant, don't understand economics and so on
This is irrelevant to everything we've been talking about. This is like two or three logical fallacies rolled into one. You can't pick out (supposedly) weaker arguments out of a larger debate and claim to have disproved everything, and you can't dismiss what someone's saying because they're (supposedly) ignorant. Come on, you're a smart guy, and you can do better than that. The only reason I can think of that you're resorting to this is because the discussion is going badly for you and you're quickly realizing that third worldism is not nearly so easily refuted as you thought it was when you first got into this.

[Thug Lessons]

When I first began to familiarize myself with these terms, I was under the impression that Marx uses "value" and "exchange-value" interchangeably.

Then I came under the impression that by "value" he means SNLT and that exchange-value is an expression of this.

Now, after reading you two, I'm under the impression that no one really knows which of these is meant by Marx.

It's a shame that this discussion is interspersed within the Third-Worldist discussion, because I'd like to see it split off into a dedicated thread.
Based on his comments in his response to you, I'd say our views on value aren't so different as they appeared. It seems like we have a minor disagreement that hopefully will be resolved before this thread is over. However I agree that the exact definition of value would make an interesting topic for another thread.

[S.Artesian]

You have stated that there is no surplus value transferred, or extracted really, in industrial production in the US. That is a claim that means there is no reproduction of capital in industrial production in the US; there is no accumulation in industrial production in the US; that in fact there is no profit in industrial production in the US; that all "wealth" in the US amounts to imperial tribute paid, or maybe rent to an entire society by the developed world.

It's one thing to confuse exchange value and market price, which are not the same thing, [price is the monetary expression of value and only rarely coincides with value. Exchange value is the value of a commodity based on the labor time embedded in its production], it's quite something else to say that there is no surplus value extracted in domestic production in the US. That's not confusion, that's a total disavowal of reality.



Your basic line of reasoning is that bourgeois statistics cannot be trusted as these are not calculated along the lines of the labor theory of value. Yet, you provide no "adjustments" to the "bourgeois statistics" on profit, profitability, labor costs, based on your improved statistical method. When challenged you "overreach" or "exaggerate" but you don't provide that correction that the supposed "LTV" data would provid


I assume your basis for making this claim is the same basis you have for everything else: 1) wages are higher in the US 2) the US imports more commodities from the "3rd world" than it exports 3) the US has a smaller portion of its work force engaged in industry and agriculture than 3rd world countries.

Regarding 1): production worker wages are higher in Germany, France, etc. than they are in the US-- is there no surplus value accumulated in industrial production in those countries also? Marx showed that high wages are perfectly compatible with high rates of surplus value extraction, and that high wages in production were also compatible with lower prices of production,based on the relations of the components of capital and the reproduction of the worker's wage. And Marx showed that market prices, higher or lower than nominal value of the commodity, worked to channel, direct, ration the total social profit according to the proficiency of the producer.

Relatively, to "value added" in production, which is about as close as the bourgeoisie get to acknowledging surplus value, US wage rates are, in fact, modest.

Regarding 2) The US imports approximately 45% of its total imports from other advanced capitalist economies, with the remaining 55% from the rest of the world, including the oil producing states and the former Soviet bloc countries. For the EU, however 66% of its trade is intra-EU trade. So again, is there surplus value accumulation in those countries? Despite the reduced portions of imports from 3rd world countries, are the advanced economies of the EU also "non-productive," and is the working class in those countries producing value?

Regarding 3: The smaller portion of the work force engaged in industrial production in the US, and the advanced countries, like the smaller portion of the populations engaged in agriculture, is a result of what Marx called the increasing "organic composition of capital"-- where the technical component vastly outweighs the wage-labor input. This is substitution of machinery for labor is the development Marx sees in capital which he calls the real domination of capital, when relative surplus value becomes the critical component of capitalist accumulation. Consequently, what you regard as "proof" that there is no surplus value accumulation in industrial production in the US is exactly the opposite-- is exactly the proof of that intensive aggrandizement of surplus value by reducing the necessary labor time, the time it takes for the worker to reproduce his or her own wage. It is precisely this amplification of the productivity of labor that creates the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, for the bourgeoisie to further intensify extraction of surplus value by reducing employment, cutting wages; for the bourgeoisie to seek offsets to that decline through investments in production in less-developed countries; for capital to migrate away from industrial production and into finance, real estate etc. All these things are the product of increased surplus value extraction, not its absence.

So... if you want to rework the data provided by the US BEA, DoC's Quarterly Financial Review of Manufacturing, and its cumulative AFF tracking of manufacturing costs and values according to your own "LTV based methodology"-- please have at it, and show us how that changes the appropriation of surplus labor time.

But if you don't do that, and you still insist that there is no surplus value accumulation in US industrial production, then discussion is pointless. Just that simple.

[anticap]

Marx does use the terms value and exchange value interchangeably. The value of a commodity is the labor-time embedded in its production.

These are contradictory: one says value = exchange-value; the other says value = labor-time. If both are true, then exchange-value = labor-time -- but that's not the case: exchange-value = the quantitative expression of (socially-necessary) labor-time.

When we use "value" in place of "exchange-value," we're simply stepping over that explanation and cutting to the chase: value is expressed as exchange-value, so it's safe to simply say "value"; but that doesn't make them the same thing.


... exchange value is the only form that value can be expressed and made manifest under capitalism.

Precisely: exchange-value is the expression of value; they are not one-and-the-same. Expressions of things are not the things themselves.


... I agree that the exact definition of value would make an interesting topic for another thread.

I've taken the liberty here, and invite you both (and anyone else) to take it from there.

[S.Artesian]

These are contradictory: one says value = exchange-value; the other says value = labor-time. If both are true, then exchange-value = labor-time -- but that's not the case: exchange-value = the quantitative expression of (socially-necessary) labor-time.

When we use "value" in place of "exchange-value," we're simply stepping over that explanation and cutting to the chase: value is expressed as exchange-value, so it's safe to simply say "value"; but that doesn't make them the same thing.



Precisely: exchange-value is the expression of value; they are not one-and-the-same. Expressions of things are not the things themselves.


The value relation can only be expressed as exchange value in capitalism because its origin is in the exchange between wage-labor and the means of production which transforms surplus labor into surplus labor time into surplus value.

Marx uses the terms interchangeably in his manuscripts. Exchange value is the value of the commodity in its relations with all other commodities, the relations of which are determined by and the manifestation of value.

For example in his draft of the Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy Marx writes:

For through the very act of new production......surplus labour and hence surplus value, the surplus product, the total result of labour altogether (of both surplus and necessary labour) are posited as capital, as exchange value [bold added] confronting living labour capacity independently and indifferently, in other words as its mere use value

In the next paragraph, Marx gives us, as he is always inclined to do, another expression of this same process:


Labour capacity has appropriated only the subjective conditions of necessary labour--the means of subsistence for productive labor capacity, i.e. for its reproduction as mere labour capacity separated from the conditions of its realisation--and it has posited these conditions themselves as objects, values, [emphasis in the original] which confront it in an alien commanding personification

Yes, value refers to the value relation, labor organized as wage labor; exchange value refers to relation expressed socially, in the socially necessary time of reproduction.

My point was that Marx uses the terms interchangeably and later that exchange value is not equal to market price.

[JustMovement]

I can't keep up with all the theory but it seems to me this is a non-issue. Of course the collective life style of the First world is kept up by the poverty of the third world. It's called globalization. Dirt cheap wages, and the widespread rape of natural resources in foreign countries by part of transnational companies have created the abundance of cheap products (everything from electronics to grain) that enable the first world to enjoy its life-style. Where did people think these goods were coming from? Industry has been steadily declining since the 80's!
I think the more contentious part of the argument is saying that the First world proleteriat is morally responsible for the exploitation that takes place. Surely moral resposibility implies a decision being made, and the only people making decisions are the politicians signing free trade agreements, and the CEOs in charge of the corporations.
In fact, although the first world collectively has benefited from the exploitation of the third world, the working class has payed a price (the destruction of industry, massive unemployment, the shame of having to live off benefits, etc. think Thatcher and Regan.)
I think the fundemental premise of Marxism, if nothing else is true, is this: That there is a casual relationship between the wealth of a minority and the poverty of a majority. Or actually since wealth and poverty are qualtitative descriptions, this is a better way to phrase it: as the wealth of minority group A inceases, the wealth of majority group B decreases and vice-versa.
I think the test of wether the first world, including the working class, is exploiting the third world is: as wages of worker's in the third world increase (as is slowly happening) wages of worker's in the first world (in terms of purchasing power) will decrease.

[Skooma Addict]

I think the fundemental premise of Marxism, if nothing else is true, is this: That there is a casual relationship between the wealth of a minority and the poverty of a majority. Or actually since wealth and poverty are qualtitative descriptions, this is a better way to phrase it: as the wealth of minority group A inceases, the wealth of majority group B decreases and vice-versa.If that is the fundamental premise of Marxism then Marxism is doomed.

[anticap]

If that is the fundamental premise of Marxism then Marxism is doomed.

I don't agree that it is the fundamental premise of Marxism, but I do agree that it is true. But since you're still sputtering one-liners without argument, I have to guess at what your argument might be, and in this case I'm guessing it would be something like "exchange is not a zero-sum game, yadda yadda, blah blah."

Assuming I'm right, let's continue with a thought experiment: Suppose the entire membership of RevLeft had a meetup in a large auditorium. Suppose we all brought $10 and one widget. Suppose we began buying and selling widgets in an uncoordinated "free market" of sorts. At the end of the frenzy of buying and selling, there would remain the exact same number of dollars and widgets. Not a single dollar would have been generated by the process of exchange. All that would have changed is that some would have amassed many dollars and widgets; some would have been swindled out of both their dollars and their widget; and the rest would have ended up somewhere in between those two extremes. Some would have gotten rich because others either lost money or went broke entirely. It couldn't have happened any other way. There is a causal relationship there. Exchange is a zero-sum game.

[turquino]

Except the claim is made that the superior productivity in the developing countries is indicated by trade deficits of the advanced countries with the developing countries. Consequently the flow of value in the trade process is going the other way.

I've read this argument before about the prices of goods developed in the advanced countries being overpriced because of the wage component. First of all, such an argument ignores what Ricardo proved, and Marx subsequently reconfirmed over 150 years ago-- that the prices of commodities are not dependent upon the wages paid to the producers of the commodities. The prices are the monetary representations of value, and value depends upon the relation of the means of production to the labor component of production. The value depends on the necessary time of reproduction. It is more than possible that higher wages actually produce lower-priced commodities.

Secondly, the claim that the wage component of production in advanced countries leads to "overpricing" ignores one crucial fact-- that production workers wages amount to less than 10% of the average costs of production in US industry. Even adding on 40% for benefits [which is pretty generous given what's happened over the last decade], we're talking about 14% of the total cost of production...on average. In the more capital intensive industries like petroleum refining, the percentage drops to 5 percent, and in the really advanced sectors, like semiconductor fabrication it gets down to 2 percent and can go even lower. I don't think there's any basis for arguing that the wages paid to workers in the US are the basis for "overpricing."

We need to go a bit deeper into this than simply say there is "unequal exchange" based on a high wage structure.

The way the value transfer works, and it works to the benefit of the bourgeoisie of the developed countries, not the "entire nation," is that the advanced countries produce more sophisticated commodities; commodities containing, and requiring, a greater amount of socially necessary labor time for their reproduction-- like commercial aircraft, locomotives, or... let's say advanced microprocessors as opposed to bulk commodity production of DRAM chips.
I don’t think differences in organic composition of capital or turn-over time in between industries are enough to explain unequal exchange on a global scale. These exist everywhere and capitalism could not continue without them. Just as there are backwaters in the imperialist countries, there are metropoles in the underdeveloped. It is not a fact of unequal exchange.

While capitalist superprofits are temporary, superwages can be permanent if they come to constitute part of the moral and historical element of labour power. Unlike Ricardo, Marx recognized it was possible for workersto raise their wages at the expense of capitalist profit. Within a single country, a generalized rise in wages meant a fall in the general rate of profit. Which product prices were affected would be dependent on the responsive movement of capital. This was the case when when capital and labour were both immobile. But the situation is different if capital has the freedom to move internationally while labour is unable to move. A more or less uniform international rate of return forms (temporarily ignoring high risk premiums in the underdeveloped). Wages on the other hand are fixed by national circumstance. Variations in wages between countries of different development are much more dramatic than variations within the country. In the middle 19th century there was a 4:1 difference in wages between British unskilled workers and the poorest unskilled in India. In Marx’s day it was reasonable to conclude that the higher intensity of work in British factories meant that they were paid subsistence . Now wage difference are more than 50:1. You cited figures about labour being ‘only’ 10% of the average costs in US industry, however in most export industries in Central America or Southeast Asia they average less than 1%.

If wages rise across the board in the US, the result is a decrease in national surplus value, and a new lower rate of profit internationally. Prices of production tend to rise in the US because the effects of the higher wage costs are more dramatic in a single country than the effects of a lower overall rate of profit in all countries. Capitalists in the US and everywhere else will, of course, resist rising wages in all cases, as it lowers their rate of profit. But as I mentioned previously, if it’s the case that a nation’s workers are no longer net donors, but recipients of other workers’ value, then struggling for the capitalists’ relative share becomes increasingly less attractive than entering into a national front with them and expanding the absolute share by exploiting other nations.

[Skooma Addict]

Assuming I'm right, let's continue with a thought experiment: Suppose the entire membership of RevLeft had a meetup in a large auditorium. Suppose we all brought $10 and one widget. Suppose we began buying and selling widgets in an uncoordinated "free market" of sorts. At the end of the frenzy of buying and selling, there would remain the exact same number of dollars and widgets. Not a single dollar would have been generated by the process of exchange. All that would have changed is that some would have amassed many dollars and widgets; some would have been swindled out of both their dollars and their widget; and the rest would have ended up somewhere in between those two extremes. Some would have gotten rich because others either lost money or went broke entirely. It couldn't have happened any other way. There is a causal relationship there. Exchange is a zero-sum game.

You are completely leaving out capital accumulation and production over time. These two facts make it possible for the wealth of everyone to increase, and it also makes possible for minority group X to see an increase in their wealth while others are not harmed in the process (which was the initial claim that I was responding to).

[Dean]

You are completely leaving out capital accumulation and production over time. These two facts make it possible for the wealth of everyone to increase, and it also makes possible for minority group X to see an increase in their wealth while others are not harmed in the process (which was the initial claim that I was responding to).
Capital accumulation, by definition, involves harm to others - those who lose access to control over the means of production. More efficient models of capitalist enterprise also enjoy less labor requirement per widget, which further disenfranchises people.

The fact is the the profit model has simple aims: to accumulate wealth. It's very good at this and we've seen nothing but the accumulation of wealth - case in point: the number of millionaires is lower than it was since before the economic crisis, but the net value held by millionaires has actually increased.

[anticap]

You are completely leaving out capital accumulation and production over time.

No shit, Sherlock. I was making a specific point, which you completely ignored.

[Skooma Addict]

Capital accumulation, by definition, involves harm to others - those who lose access to control over the means of production. More efficient models of capitalist enterprise also enjoy less labor requirement per widget, which further disenfranchises people.
Capital accumulation does not by definition harm others. Have you noticed the fact that living standards of everyone has risen historically?

If I make a fishing net which allows me to catch more fish and thus lower the market selling price. I am helping others. Capital accumulation helps others.


The fact is the the profit model has simple aims: to accumulate wealth. It's very good at this and we've seen nothing but the accumulation of wealth - case in point: the number of millionaires is lower than it was since before the economic crisis, but the net value held by millionaires has actually increased. Thanks to the profit motive, the wealth of everyone accumulates beyond what it otherwise would have been. So in a sense, you are right.

[Skooma Addict]

No shit, Sherlock. I was making a specific point, which you completely ignored.

And what point is that? Given that I explained how this...

"I think the fundemental premise of Marxism, if nothing else is true, is this: That there is a casual relationship between the wealth of a minority and the poverty of a majority. Or actually since wealth and poverty are qualtitative descriptions, this is a better way to phrase it: as the wealth of minority group A inceases, the wealth of majority group B decreases and vice-versa."

...is incorrect.

[anticap]

I explained how this...

"I think the fundemental premise of Marxism, if nothing else is true, is this: That there is a casual relationship between the wealth of a minority and the poverty of a majority. Or actually since wealth and poverty are qualtitative descriptions, this is a better way to phrase it: as the wealth of minority group A inceases, the wealth of majority group B decreases and vice-versa."

...is incorrect.

No, you didn't. You evaded my point (it's still there for you to read, I'm not going to repeat it), where I showed that exchange is a zero-sum game. Your response was that, given time, new stuff can be introduced. Well no shit again! Now guess who will produce it, and then guess who will amass the bulk of it. (Hint: they are two different groups.)

But that's irrelevant here, because at any given moment there is a finite amount of stuff, and it's only piled up at one end because there's a paucity at the other end, as JustMovement correctly implied.

Now stop playing dumb.

[Dean]

No, you didn't. You evaded my point (it's still there for you to read, I'm not going to repeat it), where I showed that exchange is a zero-sum game. Your response was that, given time, new stuff can be introduced. Well no shit again! Now guess who will produce it, and then guess who will amass the bulk of it. (Hint: they are two different groups.)

But that's irrelevant here, because at any given moment there is a finite amount of stuff, and it's only piled up at one end because there's a paucity at the other end, as JustMovement correctly implied.

Now stop playing dumb.

Ever notice how Skooma consistently relies on microcosmic relationships, and then fails in his analysis at that? Its real cute.

He's just trying to be obtuse; I'm increasingly convinced that he's just trolling the forums.

[Skooma Addict]

But that's irrelevant here, because at any given moment there is a finite amount of stuff, and it's only piled up at one end because there's a paucity at the other end, as JustMovement correctly implied.That was not the point, and if it was it was totally meaningless, as this would be true no matter what economic system you are operating under.

Although lets look again at the initial point...

"I think the fundemental premise of Marxism, if nothing else is true, is this: That there is a casual relationship between the wealth of a minority and the poverty of a majority. Or actually since wealth and poverty are qualtitative descriptions, this is a better way to phrase it: as the wealth of minority group A inceases, the wealth of majority group B decreases and vice-versa."

Where in the bolded portion of the statement are you drawing the conclusion that it is implicitly excluding capital accumulation?

Oh, and another thing. Even when discussing fixed resources, peoples perceived utility can still increase. If I trade a widget for a hammer, then both me and the person I am trading with gain. Even if the resources are fixed.

But again, if the point is assuming fixed resources, it is a completely moot point. Even under common ownership of the means of production, someone can only get/use something at the expense of me getting/using it.


Ever notice how Skooma consistently relies on microcosmic relationships, and then fails in his analysis at that? Its real cute.

He's just trying to be obtuse; I'm increasingly convinced that he's just trolling the forums. You're obtuse, and you didn't respond to my refutations. So I take it that you concede the point.

[RGacky3]

"I think the fundemental premise of Marxism, if nothing else is true, is this: That there is a casual relationship between the wealth of a minority and the poverty of a majority. Or actually since wealth and poverty are qualtitative descriptions, this is a better way to phrase it: as the wealth of minority group A inceases, the wealth of majority group B decreases and vice-versa."


Its not that simple, growth does happen, up to a point, but its not sustainable, however, overall thats true, growth is almost all going to the minority, in that sense the realtive wealth of the majority does decrease.

[Dean]

You're obtuse, and you didn't respond to my refutations. So I take it that you concede the point.

If I take your childish logic here and assert concessions on you, I would be able to enjoy rejection of 90% of your posts since they consistently ignore the points I make - even when I give you the benefit of the doubt and respond to your points before making mine.

You're an elitist creep who feels privileged in your debating style to the point that you feel that the entire debate should be subsumed into your argument so much that the arguments of others can be ignored.

This is why I didn't respond to your post. I can see why anticap is getting frustrated with you - I used to let your crap get to me, as well.

It really stood out to me that you completely ignored the Karl Popper debate in which I went into a much more penetrating analysis of the methodology of Popper, Marx and the Austrian school, and specifically addressed you - and mentioned the thread to you elsewhere - and yet you were simply not interested.

That is what I'm talking about, Skooma. You have one goal, and that is to attack materialist and historicist economic theories and arguments from a totally mystical, idealist edifice. You don't provide any valuable criticism, analysis or discussion on the points, and that's why you piss people off here. You only come off as self-assured because each post manages to totally skirt the points its supposed to be a response to.

It's just not that big of a deal that you disagree with us. What irritates us (at least me, but I see it in others) is that you don't have the slightest respect for the arguments and discussions of others here, to the point that you simply ignore the meat of them.

[anticap]

Ever notice how Skooma consistently relies on microcosmic relationships, and then fails in his analysis at that? Its real cute.

He's just trying to be obtuse; I'm increasingly convinced that he's just trolling the forums.

Yeah, he was one of only three people on my ignore list, under his previous name (Olaf), before I decided that ignoring people (even the worst of people) only makes conversations confusing for me. Still, that says quite a lot about my perception of him. I'm ashamed of myself for responding to him again. I need to remember to keep him on virtual-ignore.

[Skooma Addict]

If I take your childish logic here and assert concessions on you, I would be able to enjoy rejection of 90% of your posts since they consistently ignore the points I make - even when I give you the benefit of the doubt and respond to your points before making mine.

Personal attacks. No argument here.



You're an elitist creep who feels privileged in your debating style to the point that you feel that the entire debate should be subsumed into your argument so much that the arguments of others can be ignored.

No argument.


This is why I didn't respond to your post. I can see why anticap is getting frustrated with you - I used to let your crap get to me, as well.


No. You didn't respond to my point because I refuted you, and you have no adequate response to my refutation.



It really stood out to me that you completely ignored the Karl Popper debate in which I went into a much more penetrating analysis of the methodology of Popper, Marx and the Austrian school, and specifically addressed you - and mentioned the thread to you elsewhere - and yet you were simply not interested.

LOL! Wait, so I am obliged to comment on every thread you want just to please your whims?


That is what I'm talking about, Skooma. You have one goal, and that is to attack materialist and historicist economic theories and arguments from a totally mystical, idealist edifice.

Again, you are not making an actual argument here. You are saying that you are a "materialist" since it sounds more scientific and objective. But you actually don't know what you are talking about. In no way are my arguments coming from a "mystical idealist edifice."


You don't provide any valuable criticism, analysis or discussion on the points, and that's why you piss people off here. You only come off as self-assured because each post manages to totally skirt the points its supposed to be a response to.

Lies. In fact, this very thread is an counter evidence to your claim.


It's just not that big of a deal that you disagree with us. What irritates us (at least me, but I see it in others) is that you don't have the slightest respect for the arguments and discussions of others here, to the point that you simply ignore the meat of them.


Again, this is just false. I respect the arguments of some people here.

By the way, you still have not responded to my refutations, which leads me to believe this entire red herring of yours was intended to change the subject.

[Skooma Addict]

Yeah, he was one of only three people on my ignore list, under his previous name (Olaf), before I decided that ignoring people (even the worst of people) only makes conversations confusing for me. Still, that says quite a lot about my perception of him. I'm ashamed of myself for responding to him again. I need to remember to keep him on virtual-ignore.

Whenever you guys are done patting yourselves on the back and telling each other how superior and objective you are, let me know when you want to...you know...respond to my points.

[Skooma Addict]

Its not that simple, growth does happen, up to a point, but its not sustainable, however, overall thats true, growth is almost all going to the minority, in that sense the realtive wealth of the majority does decrease.

The relative wealth of a minority can decrease but it doesn't have to. It can go up (and again, this is nothing specific to capitalism). But the important point is that the absolute wealth of everyone can increase.

[Dean]

By the way, you still have not responded to my refutations, which leads me to believe this entire red herring of yours was intended to change the subject.

In your example, capital accumulation (which I assume refers to the fish) will impoverish those who do not have the means to purchase or otherwise fish with netting, by devaluing their labor and enhancing the value of yours. Thanks for not responding to anything else in my post - apparently, you concede the point.

[Skooma Addict]

You're describing capital creation, not accumulation - which will in your example impoverish those who do not have the means to purchase or otherwise fish with netting, by devaluing their labor and enhancing the value of yours. Thanks for not responding to anything else in my post - apparently, you concede the point.

Capital creation is capital accumulation, and I also responded to your entire post. Also, given that the net allows me to lower the price of fish, I am helping others. Does every new innovation "impoverish" people? Can we not have cars since that will "impoverish" carriage drivers?

[RGacky3]

The relative wealth of a minority can decrease but it doesn't have to. It can go up (and again, this is nothing specific to capitalism). But the important point is that the absolute wealth of everyone can increase.

If the wealth of a minority goes up more than the wealth of the rest, then the rest's realtive wealth goes down, its simple math.


Capital creation is capital accumulation, and I also responded to your entire post. Also, given that the net allows me to lower the price of fish, I am helping others. Does every new innovation "impoverish" people? Can we not have cars since that will "impoverish" carriage drivers?

Capital creation is not capital accumulation, people that mine diamonds are creating capital, they are creating wealth, the people that own the mines accumulate that wealth.

innovations don't impoverish people, its the fact that they are in the hands of a few that impoverishes people.

[Skooma Addict]

If the wealth of a minority goes up more than the wealth of the rest, then the rest's realtive wealth goes down, its simple math.I was saying that there is not some law which states that the relative wealth of the minority must always be increasing. But anyways, this is nothing specific to capitalism, and again, absolute wealth matters a lot more.


Capital creation is not capital accumulation, people that mine diamonds are creating capital, they are creating wealth, the people that own the mines accumulate that wealth.When new capital is created, it is also accumulated, even if for a short period of time. Someone owns the capital that is created, and they have accumulated capital.


innovations don't impoverish people, its the fact that they are in the hands of a few that impoverishes people. You mean like cars?

[RGacky3]

I was saying that there is not some law which states that the relative wealth of the minority must always be increasing.

Overall yes, its the law of the market, the more money you have the easier it is to have more control and make more money.


But anyways, this is nothing specific to capitalism, and again, absolute wealth matters a lot more.


Its specifit to class society, and no absolute wealth does'nt matter more, also, there is no connection to the growth of absolute wealth and capitalism, also, ITS UNSUSTAINABLE.


When new capital is created, it is also accumulated, even if for a short period of time. Someone owns the capital that is created, and they have accumulated capital.

Under Capitalism, but the accumulation is not what makes it positive, the creation is positive, the accumulation is just who gets it. Your mixing the 2 on purpose to make it seam like someone making money on something is the same as someone making something, which it is not.


You mean like cars?

No, not like cars, that like saying planes kill people because they are used to drop bombs. Your being stupid, capitalism impoverishes people by centralizing wealth in the hands of the few, no matter how the wealth is made, be it cars or candy or cocktails.

[scarletghoul]

Any attempt to divide countries up into 'worlds' is going to be inconsistent and pointless.

There are "first world countries" like South Korea under imperial domination by other countries.

Is Ireland first world ? Second ? Third ?

What about Taiwan ?

Furthermore within the 'first world' there are masses of people living no better than in third world countries (ie, native american reservations and some ghettoes).

All countries have classes, and yes while much of the working class in certain imperial countries can be (momentarily) bought off into a 'middle class' this has never applied to the whole population and can never last.

Is Greece first world or what ??

There are no 'worlds'; the world is divided principally into classes and communities.

[Conquer or Die]

Labor is the sole agent in creating material wealth. If some people are getting overpaid or underpaid they may still experience alienation of labor - some form of "oppression" - but not necessarily undue theft.

[Dean]

Capital creation is capital accumulation, and I also responded to your entire post. Also, given that the net allows me to lower the price of fish, I am helping others. Does every new innovation "impoverish" people? Can we not have cars since that will "impoverish" carriage drivers?
I changed my post before this was posted precisely because capital accumulation is a vague enough term that it could be applied to the example. I still think its unrealistic, but the example does compare to real phenomena - so it doesn't really matter.

Nobody is refuting the point that capital accumulation - really, every economic activity - has mixed conclusions. It is a fact that innovative technology empowers those who can maintain control overs its distributive properties - that is the distribution of profit and commodities that it engenders.

However, the accumulation of capital is not primarily carried out via innovation. The BoA acquisition of Countrywide Financial, for instance, was in part an attempt to acquire a better structure for mortgage financing, which BoA switched to within a year. Countrywide, which owned the system (I can't say whether or not they developed it) faced insolvency; BoA used its extant economic power to purchase the organization, and with it, its favorable capital.

Capital accumulation is mostly carried out by tactful purchases and maintenance of the means of production. In fact, business models which are themselves innovative and serve to accumulate capital have an interesting consequence of centralizing the control over capital while not necessarily "benefiting" anyone on a populist basis.

The problem with your model is that you assume particular economic conditions which may or may not be present. If your example existed in a small fishing village where netting was hard to come by, for instance, the few firms which has access to netting would soon eliminate the value of labor in the village - fishing would be less lucrative, the labor pool will swell and commodities will in general become dear to a population which is now out of a source of income.


The following quote strikes me every time I hear it:

There is one rule for industrialists and that is: make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
(my emphasis)

Clearly, the emboldened portion contradicts its precedent: "lowest cost possible." But it is true in the context of high demand and short supply for/of labor.

However, we don't have an economy wherein labor is in greater demand; in fact, the ability for capital to move, and in general for investors to shift their capital and finances to different markets and firms, has created a system where not only does a product have to sell for more than its cost, this difference has to be greater than the net value of other investments. Otherwise, there is no incentive for such investment.

In your example, labor should become more valuable - it has produced more value, after all. However, the empowerment of labor is not really what happens - it could be true that it happens for the few that still can work in the industry. However, the opposite will occur if the innovation causes a surplus of labor (which is highly likely, given that demand doesn't instantaneously grow with expansion of production capabilities) - a surplus which creates competition for net-fishing jobs and drives down wages.

It is the management of the innovative technology by a minority, in the furtherance of their own ends which incentivizes the devaluation of labor - or in other words, the decrease in costs for industry. This decrease will create more investment in the given firm, more profits or more capital accumulation, depending on their business model.