Help refuting third-worldism

[Questionable]

I already started a topic about a third-worldist book and there's another one going on right now so I kinda hate to add to the pile, but this is referring to a specific discussion I'm having so I feel like it's acceptable.

I posted an article on a site that is prone to third-worldism that attempted to refute it using a lot of theoretical content from Hoxha. I got this as a response:



"There are a number of problems here. First, it’s hard to call the APL piece a ‘long critique’ considering how silly and error-ridden it was. A three-part response was posted at Monkey Smashes Heaven. Second, it’s a plainly chauvinist argument. It elevates the privileged’s ‘desire to act’ to the level of strategy: akin to what you mentioned about Race Traitor. The world’s exploited masses are over five billion people strong and by comparison includes almost no Amerikans. You know there is a level of chauvinism when it always comes right back to, ‘ya, but what should Joe Amerika and I do?’
I would like to know how many people actually starve to death in the U.S. and under what specific conditions. Perhaps the APL has some hotline to starving Americans that I don’t know about. I do know of plenty of services provided to people in the U.S. which prevents starvation, something not available to 35,000 who otherwise die every day of such. APL should read up on what class is about. It really doesn’t matter if First Worlders individually attempt “give up” being an exploiter any more than it does individual capitalists attempt to do so. The bottom line is that First Worlders won’t organize against their own privilege. Instead, they will organize to defend it. Would not a capitalist starve if they gave up their wealth and position in society? I guess the APL also expects us to weep for capitalists, who are just as much stuck in a ethical dilemma as your average First Worlder. The idea that there’s a backroom ‘bribe’ happening being imperialism and individual First Worlders lacks nuance. If anything, First Worlders can’t refuse the bride, i.e. parasitism, because it is inextricably interwoven into their culture and the material means on which it exists. This ‘bribe’ is historic and social in the widest sense.
There are marginal movements in the First World in which individuals seek to supposedly extract themselves in one way or another from the system. I’m thinking here of everything from CrimethInc, to Race Traitor, to diet-based politics, communes and the Degrowth Movement. So clearly, there are options out there. The vast majority of Amerikans simply aren’t down for for stuff like this because they really have no reason for it. They’d rather drive passenger cars and live in the comfort provided for them. After all this time, I’m not even sure what their criticism was about. This is true with some critics on the so-called “left.” It’s almost as if they are saying, “You’re right, but we’re going to pretend otherwise and oppose you anyways.”
Doesn’t this seem to be the case with APL, if they are admitting First Worlders are helplessly coopted into supporting imperialism? Doesn’t this support the LLCO and RAIM line on the revolutionary masses being in the Third World?"


It was a long quote from a magazine but I'm kind of having trouble formulating a response. I know the idea that every single worker in "Amerika" is guilty of "parasitism" is a load of bullshit but I need help formulating a response. If anyone is brave enough to read all of that I sure would appreciate some help articulating a counter-argument.

[Questionable]

Okay, I managed to come up with an adequate response on my own to the above quote, but now I need some assistance again as I've come up to another roadblock.


The proletariat is also that which has nothing left to lose, which is the point I was getting at, which is not an idealist point though it might seem so if you mechanically essentialize the concept. For Marx there was always the proletariat in itself and the proletariat for itself (this shows up in Capital vol. 3 and the Grundrisse), the former having to do with the point of production and the latter having to do with consciousness… which is the point I was getting at. Please, let's be a little bit dialectical about this, as Marx was, rather than just giving essentialist pat answers. Maybe a more accurate way of putting it is "the hard core" of the proletariat, as Canada's PCR short-hands it, rather than simply dividing the working class from proletariat which has been one traditional way to make sense of the "for itself" qualification but, admittedly, one that is semantically confusing.

You say you take seriously the issue of drawing divisions in race between the working class, but you don't seem to understand those divisions already exist. Again, idealism on your part: it seems you assume racism is just something fostered by a bourgeois conspiracy that drops down from the sky, like a Platonic form, to foster divisions in the working class. That's not materialism; if we want to talk about racism we have to talk about the material grounds of racism, not simply assume it's an ideology that comes from nowhere or is cooked by a secret cabal of bourgeois conspirators. Lenin's theory of the labour aristocracy attempts to explain why the working class is already divided on a global scale; it can be used to explain why the same divisions exist on national scale.

He's also claiming that no revolutionary struggles were ever waged in America along the lines of the Black Panthers, AIM, Malcolm X, etc. Can someone help me out with these points?

[Ismail]

The APL piece was fundamentally flawed in that it confused the two different "Three Worlds Theories." The first was the foreign policy line of China, the second came from the Harvard-based Maoist Internationalist Movement and from there went onto the internet where it has stood since.

The first justified China allying with anti-communist regimes by arguing that US imperialism was on the decline and Soviet social-imperialism was preparing for global military conquest. The second (at least the Monkeysmashesheaven/LLCO "advance" over MIM) proposes a "Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Exploited Nations" in which the population of the "first world" experiences mass reeducation, concentration camps, etc. manned by the "third world" proletariat and peasantry so that global communism can be achieved by destroying the decadent West and its populace, which is considered to be almost entirely comprised of "exploiters."

Both are dumb but you can't fault the APL for failing to take the latter seriously and presuming they meant the first "theory."

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I don't mean to sound like an ass but why bother? Third Worldism is basically exclusively on the Internet and contains like 10 idiot white kids complaining about white people in Amerikkka. These people are just weird and can/will never get anything done in the real world.

[ind_com]

Okay, I managed to come up with an adequate response on my own to the above quote, but now I need some assistance again as I've come up to another roadblock.

Various objective and subjective conditions can make even the broad masses racist at times. But this does not imply that even in hostile objective conditions, subjective conditions cannot be constructed to effectively combat racism within the broad masses. Han chauvinism was an usual social feature of pre-revolution China. Yet the Hans played the major role in winning the Chinese Revolution. Even if you assume that there is racism among large sections of the American working class, it would only direct you to a single solution; building a genuine communist party to combat racism and prepare the working class for revolution.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The funny thing about third-worldism is that none of its proponents, seemingly, are either:

a) members of the third world, OR
b) active in real life.

So yeah, don't bother. They're just quasi-trolls really.

[cynicles]

Why is where you live and race the only axis these guys use? What about gender? Women are structurally exploited capitalism, if we carried their logic forward not only could we not consider white people or those living in the 1st world proletarians but we could also exclude third-world males. And why not carry it even further and develop a complex web of intersectionalities to determine which group is "more oppressed than thou". If we relied on their theory of what a "true" proletarian is only a pan-ethnic agnostic MtF transgender pansexual workers of the 3rd world would be allowed to call themselves proletariat.

[Break Free1017]

It's an unproductive and divisive ideology. In America, it's nothing more than white, upper-middle class teenage self-hatred.

[Fruit of Ulysses]

cyicles is inspiring me, thatd be cool if there was a ladyboy centered form of maoism that posits non-white transgedered prostitues in third world countries as the only vanguard a the height of imperialism lol.

As hyperbolic and divorced from the realities of "ameikkkan" workers as they are, I wouldnt entirely discredit their discourse. Mao's original Third World Theory is a powerful ideological weapon and a breakthrough during the imperialist epoch, but I think Ismail may have slightly oversimplified it, even though i love all his posts for the most part.

The basic notion that due to imperialist super-profits the first world working class has been "bought off" with a dramaticaly higher standard of living and wages does make sense. I know Marx based class on your relationship to the ownership of the means of production but it must be put into context that first world employees who make minimum wage olredy make way more money than over half the worlds total population so not all of them can be considered "those who have nothing to loose but their chains", and thats not the whole of the argument either. Also, since more and more the old skool proletarian jobs have been exported overseas to the third world countries, im preety sure most of the people that fit the classic stereotypical image of the proletariat from the days of Lenin and the boys these days live in the cheap industrialzed ares of third world countries (using Mao's original definition of what a 3rd world country is). From all this the conclusion is drawn that socialist revolution is needed in 3rd world countries to cut off the imperialists from the supply of excess wealth and thus prompt first world workers to revolt. They call it "global peoples war", a global version of Lin Bao's formula of surrounding the city with rural guerilla armies recruited from surrounding villages under proletarian leadership. the thrid world is the "global countryside" and the first world is "global city". Along with the unrevolutionary passive moderate reformist trend in modern amerikan unions
and the popularity of and identification with bourgois ideology amongst large segments of the employed populace it is reasoned that the first world working class is not revolutionary AT THIS TIME without the victory of their "global peoples war"

They point out some things that are important to note but they dont draw the proper conclusions. I agree that most of the amerikan working class has become "bourgois", but more in the sense that Engels meant when he was talking about the English working class of the late 19th century. Its going to far to say that there isnt ANY revolutionary potential in the amerikan working class, id say that'd be largely confined to undocumented workers and immigarant workers though. alot of people forget that in the rural southern states TONS of people live in virtual third world conditions however. during the cold war the socialist movement here got aid from the soviets n folks like that, with the imperialist war monster growing stronger and increasing its vast secruity apparatus grassroots revolutionary violence is more difficult then ever before to get away with. Thats why i think the proletarian movement does need the help of an international network of third world revolutionary countries like the ALBA alliance in Latin America, but that their existance does not decide their revolutionary potential. revolutioanry concioussness is posssible to develop here, but we would certainly need assistance from established revolutionary movements in third world coutries during a period of actual revolutionary violence and upheaval. Furthermore the advancement of national liberation and all that jazz in the third world certainly does nothing but help the movement here, there are still people who live in similar conditions here. they just have to think outside the bocks and look at the various segments of oppressed society here: oppresed nations (blacks, natives, chicanos), the glbtq, lumpenproletariat, women, youth, and the invisible slavery of migrant and illegal workers.

Remind the devout third-worldist of the glorious Fourth World! literally third world nations existing INSIDE first world nations, anyone who doesnt see the clear revolutionary potential of workers on a native rez in north america is politicaly blind. They suffer everything a third world country does on a smaller scale and the indigenous autonomy movement, which if succesful would establish politicaly independent spaces within the belly of the beast, would no doubt have a decidely proletarian character

[Fruit of Ulysses]

but aside from a more rational take on their "global class analysis" theyv got a bucn of other stuff that sounds like they just wanna be racist against whites and chauvenistic towards men, but sumtimes they criticise first world feminism and prop up this actually really reactionary "third world" view of what a real women is or something. idk dude, remind em about "reverse racism" or whatever its called

[Jimmie Higgins]

The basic notion that due to imperialist super-profits the first world working class has been "bought off" with a dramaticaly higher standard of living and wages does make sense.How so? Even if workers were "bought off" (which ignores the decades of class struggle that were actually the cause of workers in some places gaining a degree of stability) to say that someone was bought-off implies that they are being bribed to act in ways that are counter to their interests otherwise.

But the "bought-off" argument makes NO sense since the 1970s because in the US imperial power has increased while worker living standards and reforms have been stripped away. In fact US imperial dominance results not in benifits for the US working class, but a stronger domestic enemey who is more able to drive down wages and counterposes military and police funding with social reforms like welfare and so on. On top of that imperial wars and conquest also come with increased repression against dissent and increased racism against the people from the regions targeted - arab immigrants now, Latin Americans in the past and so on.


I know Marx based class on your relationship to the ownership of the means of production but it must be put into context that first world employees who make minimum wage olredy make way more money than over half the worlds total population so not all of them can be considered "those who have nothing to loose but their chains", and thats not the whole of the argument either.Wages are contentless in this context. This same logic of relative wages could be applied and is applied by the right wing when they try to convince low-wage US workers that the real problem is all those high-paid union workers.

Second, 40% of the US population holds essentially zero of the national wealth (.2 or .3%). To say that low-wage workers in a country where tons of people live below the official poverty line tons of people live paycheck to paycheck where tons of people are in debt forever where people don't have health coverage have it good or are privilaged or some sort of labor aristocracy is dillusional - or at least majorly detached from the experiences of people.

Most countries in Northern Europe have a realtivly higher living standard for workers compared to the US, more benifits, and less repression and on top of that countries with smaller GDP's meaning that workers actually do have more of the national wealth than in the US where inequality is at early 20th century levels. Yet many of these countries also have a lot more class organization, more living revolutionary tradditions, more developed reformism even... and a lot more struggle. American's say: "why do the French strike all the time, they are trying to stop the government from reducing their benifits to a level far above anything that US workers would even demand"? Materity leave, paid vaccations, health care!?

Hell in Greece, people are protesting because the government wants to allow cops onto campuses. In the US campuses are required to pay Sherrif departments and often have their own police forces when it's a public school system. In middle and high school, there are even cops on campus who arrest students and search lockers. So why are these privilaged Greeks so mad about letting cops onto campus?

So IMO it's not depravity itself that causes working class people to fight back, it can just as easily produce demoralization. What is important is an organized and independant class movement or at least traddition.

[Fruit of Ulysses]

I used the phrase "bought off" in quotation marks because its a paraphrase of what I've read them use. I suppose its meant to say that with their higher standard of living the first world working class will not find revolt against the imperialist system within their best material interest, but this is not my personal opinion. I would say, however, that even though 40 percent of the population holds essentially zero, the way that american national wealth soars above third world countries can create an illusory feeling that "things are working better overe here the way it is", even though the common worker has no say-so in its use. I'm not saying that materially imperialism will benefit a first world working class but I am saying that it can work to make an alternative system seem unrealistic because if it did work, "why arent those other countries as rich as us?"

"So IMO it's not depravity itself that causes working class people to fight back, it can just as easily produce demoralization. What is important is an organized and independant class movement or at least traddition. "

I like that alot, however I wonder how many american workers are concious of the feasibility of an organanized and independent class movement or are aware of the very beautiful labor tradition over here. But now were getting into Gramsci territory

[Questionable]

I'm glad this thread revived itself because I have another question, one coming from this article I read that attempts to explain net-exploitation: http://anti-imperialism.com/2012/10/05/what-is-net-exploitation/


Earlier this week, I went into H&M, a popular urban retail clothing store in the heart of empire, and purchased a plane t-shirt for around $6 and a pair of plain shoes for around $24. If my wage is about $10 an hour, and if everything was being paid at its full value (what I purchased, and the labor from which I drew a wage), I would expect the t-shirt and shoes to embody three hours of labor, from spinning the threads, to drawing together the shirt and shoes, shipping them to the US, displaying them at the retail outlet, the few seconds the cashier spent interacting with me, and the managing aspects of all of this. That might be the case. But if so, I am not exploited because the wages from three hours of my labor can purchase three hours of labor on the market. I’m breaking even. If there is exploitation happening in this system, it is not occurring directly at my expense. A more likely scenario, the t-shirt and shoes represent more than three hours of labor, part of which is conducted by Third World workers under slave-like conditions for near subsistence wages. If, for example, the t-shirt and shoes embody four hours of labor, then I am a net-exploiter because my wages enable me to get more labor on the market for less than I expend myself.

That is the center-point of the third-worldist argument, and I'm having some trouble comprehending. Right off the bat it seems like a huge assumption that all that labor equals three hours and the American worker is getting paid more than that. I mean, how would the third-worldist know what the exact labor value is? And how would capitalism even function if there were no workers in these first-world countries? Do they just exist in a vacuum?

I know the logic is flawed but I'm having trouble articulating it since math isn't one of my strong points. Can someone help me out?

[Zealot]

That is the center-point of the third-worldist argument, and I'm having some trouble comprehending. Right off the bat it seems like a huge assumption that all that labor equals three hours and the American worker is getting paid more than that. I mean, how would the third-worldist know what the exact labor value is? And how would capitalism even function if there were no workers in these first-world countries? Do they just exist in a vacuum?

I know the logic is flawed but I'm having trouble articulating it since math isn't one of my strong points. Can someone help me out?

I think they are saying that three hours of First World labour has the purchasing power of four hours of Third World labour but this ignores the fact that surplus value is also extracted from First World workers too.

[Raúl Duke]

Earlier this week, I went into H&M, a popular urban retail clothing store in the heart of empire, and purchased a plane t-shirt for around $6 and a pair of plain shoes for around $24. If my wage is about $10 an hour, and if everything was being paid at its full value (what I purchased, and the labor from which I drew a wage), I would expect the t-shirt and shoes to embody three hours of labor, from spinning the threads, to drawing together the shirt and shoes, shipping them to the US, displaying them at the retail outlet, the few seconds the cashier spent interacting with me, and the managing aspects of all of this. That might be the case. But if so, I am not exploited because the wages from three hours of my labor can purchase three hours of labor on the market. I’m breaking even. If there is exploitation happening in this system, it is not occurring directly at my expense. A more likely scenario, the t-shirt and shoes represent more than three hours of labor, part of which is conducted by Third World workers under slave-like conditions for near subsistence wages. If, for example, the t-shirt and shoes embody four hours of labor, then I am a net-exploiter because my wages enable me to get more labor on the market for less than I expend myself.

So this 3rd worldist lives in the "heart of the empire" where people are mostly "net-exploiters."

Now, I don't believe in 3rd worldist ideas/theories, but one issue people need to take in mind is that if they are correct that really there's nothing the left, whether 3rd worldist or not, can do in the 1st world. After all, according to that theory, the 1st world working class are "net-exploiters" and thus (I assume this is what they assume) reactionary/hopeless so there's very little the left, in the "first world," can do in terms of agitation; we might as well just quit and go on with our lives (this also include the 3rd worldists, who if they live in the first world may as well just be absurd and laughable pathetic cheer-leaders for radical/etc movements in the "3rd world" which realistically really don't give a shit about their verbal support).

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Marx and most early Marxists thought socialism would arise from places like Germany, France, Spain, England, the USA. Places where capitalism was fully developed with enlightenment values. Third worldists will call this Eurocentric and racist but.....the proff is in the pudding. What has "communism" (or attempts at it) looked like when it came from undeveloped (both socially/economically) nations thus far? Stalinism, Pol Pot, Maoism...Pfft. No thanks.

[Questionable]

So this 3rd worldist lives in the "heart of the empire" where people are mostly "net-exploiters."

Now, I don't believe in 3rd worldist ideas/theories, but one issue people need to take in mind is that if they are correct that really there's nothing the left, whether 3rd worldist or not, can do in the 1st world. After all, according to that theory, the 1st world working class are "net-exploiters" and thus (I assume this is what they assume) reactionary/hopeless so there's very little the left, in the "first world," can do in terms of agitation; we might as well just quit and go on with our lives (this also include the 3rd worldists, who if they live in the first world may as well just be absurd and laughable pathetic cheer-leaders for radical/etc movements in the "3rd world" which realistically really don't give a shit about their verbal support).

You raise an excellent point and I'm definitely not worried about any kind of third-worldist insurrection any time soon, but right now I want to attack their core theories. If I point out how useless he is he'll just shrug it off as being more enlightened than everyone else on the radical left, I want to attack the economic "theories" third-worldism is based on so I can sweep the rug right out from under him.

[Questionable]

Hate to necro this thread AGAIN but can someone help me understand this argument?


You can abstract it, yes. If you take the global gdp divided by an assumed number of hours worked, you would have what amounted to as the abstract value of labor. Obviously there are a lot of variables, so at best it is approximate. Nonetheless, it's probably not more than $40,000/yr for a full time time. The specific calculation I used assumed that one in four people work 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year. In reality however, around 75-80% of people are engaged in some labor, so it wouldn't be hard for the real value of labor to be much lower. And even if $40,000 was the bar for the value of a year's full-time labor, there would be a lot of people in the US whose wages amount to more than this.

[Althusser]

Wouldn't any 3rd world left-wing guerilla movement be considered third-worldist?

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

Wouldn't any 3rd world left-wing guerilla movement be considered third-worldist?
No, because they don´t necessarily subscribe to a 3rd- worldist theoretical framework or viewpoints.

[ind_com]

Wouldn't any 3rd world left-wing guerilla movement be considered third-worldist?

There is no left-wing guerilla movement in the third world that subscribes to third-worldism.

[Igor]

Wouldn't any 3rd world left-wing guerilla movement be considered third-worldist?

"Third worldism" is a very specific ideology, it doesn't mean that you're actually based in third world. The glorious third worldist people's war is mostly waged in basements of middle class America, not the actual third world.