Are salaries employees/white collar workers still proletarians?

[Jacob Cliff]

Is the so called "Salariat" a subsection of the proletariat? They have nothing to sell but their labor power – does this make them Proles?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

If they survive by selling their labour power, then surplus value is extracted from their labour and therefore they are proletarian. It's not about an individual's relative wealth, it's about their relationship to the means of production, their relationship to capital. It's easier to identify the proletarian character of a low-wage worker, of course, and it's sometimes hard to reconcile a relatively well-off worker who might have two cars, a nice house etc with technically being exploited for their labour but as some popular graffiti in Paris '68 pointed out:

Since 1936 I have fought for wage increases.
My father before me fought for wage increases.
Now I have a TV, a fridge, a Volkswagen.
Yet my whole life has been a drag.
Don’t negotiate with the bosses. Abolish them.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

White collar workers are most definitely proles. Granted, they may have a slightly higher wage than most blue collar workers, and may only have to work in a cubicle farm instead of an assembly line...but it's still alienating, mind-numbing tedium with little real reward. Plus white collar workers sometimes are forced to work longer hours than even their blue collar brethren.

[Sinister Intents]

Exactly as GMM and BIR said, but I'd like to add that I originally read proletarian as prostitute, and then the thread title dawned on me as well as a re-reading helped. Regardless of the kind of occupation, if you work for a wage per hour or per unit produced, you can still certainly be proletarian. Although, some petit bourgeoisie are wage workers as well. If you work for the owner who exploits you for surplus value, then you're certainly proletarian. My dad pays me a wage, and I work for him, but I'm still petit-bourgeoisie. I also know a couple small business owners that due to economics also work for other employers because they can't make enough off the labor of others or by themselves.

[Bala Perdida]

Since 1936 I have fought for wage increases.
My father before me fought for wage increases.
Now I have a TV, a fridge, a Volkswagen.
Yet my whole life has been a drag.
Don’t negotiate with the bosses. Abolish them.
Lol. It's funny because those things all have a very high potential of sucking. Even then, I've seen to many cases where good versions of those things are surrounded by garbage. Then you still get the bullcrap that "the poor live in luxury because they have refrigerators, microwaves, ovens, TVs" and various other things that are either extremely disposable in this country or come with any cheap apartment.

[oneday]

Is the so called "Salariat" a subsection of the proletariat? They have nothing to sell but their labor power – does this make them Proles?

I'd like to add that sometimes salaried workers can sometimes be exploited even further than an hourly wage worker. The boss no longer has to pay overtime (or even any extra compensation at all) for a salaried worker to work extra hours, and there are plenty of coercive tactics used to make the salaried worker work these extra hours.

There are also plenty of examples of employers illegally classifying employees as 'managers' and putting them on salary to so they don't have to pay overtime, like Walmart (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/04/10/3645483/walmart-wage-theft/).

[G4b3n]

Labor aristocrats. They enjoy a privileged economic status but are exploited in the Marxist sense of the word. Obviously the most reactionary section of the working class, but ultimately their objective interests are in revolution.

[Zanters]

Edit: I'm a stupid shit. Labor aristocracy != amount of wages.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

There's a difference between management and high performing/highly compensated employees vs. low paid white collar workers. A secretary with a yearly salary of 25k is not a labor aristocrat.

[Thirsty Crow]

Like G4B3n said, they are labour aristocrats. Probably one of the more difficult set of people to become class councious, because they have more luxuries and less things that they immediately worry about, compared to the blue-collar workers.
This makes no sense at all.

The original concept of the labor aristocracy was based on relative skill and position in organization such as the trade unions. I know it's a nice term to throw around, but it would be best if people actually knew what it meant.

And anyone imagining that office workers - no matter the internal stratification within that category - enjoy a privileged economic position and wages high enough to talk about a "labor aristocracy" is flat out wrong. As I sad, first thing is to distinguish between various white collar positions.

[John Nada]

There's a difference between management and high performing/highly compensated employees vs. low paid white collar workers. A secretary with a yearly salary of 25k is not a labor aristocrat.Having a salary is not the same as a salariat. You can get fucked over even more with a salary than a wage. A secretary or white-collar worker isn't necessarily a labor aristocrat if they make $25,000 a year, unless they have other benefits like stock and dividends. In fact, classes are not about income but relation to the means of production(ie cops or petty-bourgeoisie who make less than some workers). People who get paid a salary do tend to have higher pay, more benefits, more secure employment, in a management position and acquire stock and rent yielding assets, with a different relation to capitalism than most proletarians.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I agree, I just didn't see anyone pointing it out. This was starting to read like an llco analysis or something. I would also add contracts which higher level employees are offered also sets them further apart from the mass of white collar workers.

[Thirsty Crow]

Having a salary is not the same as a salariat. You can get fucked over even more with a salary than a wage. A secretary or white-collar worker isn't necessarily a labor aristocrat if they make $25,000 a year, unless they have other benefits like stock and dividends. In fact, classes are not about income but relation to the means of production(ie cops or petty-bourgeoisie who make less than some workers). People who get paid a salary do tend to have higher pay, more benefits, more secure employment, in a management position and acquire stock and rent yielding assets, with a different relation to capitalism than most proletarians.
Stocks and dividends are irrelevant for a meaningful use of the term "labor aristocracy". You seem to be going in precisely this direction with the conclusion that income isn't the way to talk about social class, but the contradiction remains. A share in the stock and reception of (usually quite insubstantial dividends) in no way changes both a) the fundamental relation to capital and the capitalist class, and b) the relation to management at the workplace, micro level.

The term labor aristocrat might be sensibly used for middle management types (not the faux management as a previous user brought to light), union officialdom and that increasingly rare types of workers retaining a good deal of power through knowledge at the site of work (in fact, you'd have more luck searching for this last type in non-white collar positions, perhaps in R&D, engineering and so on). What I find potentially damaging is that this misguided talk of labor aristocracy might, unintentionally, obfuscate the fundamental class relations on lines of the usual ideological division between white collar workers and blue collar workers (and this division is forcibly argued for by ruling class ideologues).

Oh yeah, and I don't think that notions like "salariat" are useful at all. They're best kept out of the discussion.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

What do you mean by faux-management? I worked at a software company that absolutely had non-manger employees who possessed power through knowledge and skillset within the workplace. Extensive knowledge of the overall product design rather than just a piece of it that a normal employee might work on in a vacuum. Theres also client relationships which can be manipulated for personal gain, something well outside the capacity of a normal worker. Neither one effects their relationship to production but I don't think anyone claims a labor aristocrat is a capitalist, just that their position within the workforce causes them to identify with the capitalist's interests.

Stocks and dividends are quite rare at this point in the US at least, companies either hand out lump bonuses at the end of the year, or more realistically nothing. A low paid white collar worker might have gotten these things as benefits in the 70s or 80s but almost never these days.

[Thirsty Crow]

What do you mean by faux-management?

This:



There are also plenty of examples of employers illegally classifying employees as 'managers' and putting them on salary to so they don't have to pay overtime, like Walmart (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/04/10/3645483/walmart-wage-theft/).

The position of relative power due to technical and planning know-how* needs to be specified; in my opinion, this is a hugely complex field where not many Marxists and anarchists excelled with detailed analysis. I'd say that this relative power and privilege needs to be manifest in an almost manager like position (even without formal occupation of that job) which translates into a different status vis-a-vis workmates (for example, informal power over hire-and-fire, job descriptions, even in the form of a "labor aristocrat" offering suggestions to management, would be sufficient and necessary).

Juan Moreno seems to me to be butchering the concept by bringing shares in stock and dividends as a factor that is significant, but both you and I claim, and are right in this I think, that it isn't. As I said, it's as if there's this oscillation between an income focused approach to divisions within the social class and a point-of-production and relationship to capital approach.



* In the past reserved primarily for engineering and materially productive occupations, mirroring the historical position of craftsmen albeit with a capitalist reaping profits; incidentally, this is the whole point of Marx's notion of real subsumption of labor under capital, which designates "deskilling" and labor process reorganization - scientific management - in part, and the penetration of science into the process via labor saving technology, so that capital completely organizes work.

[PhoenixAsh]

Labor aristocracy is predominantly a marxist-leninist term (Although it predates ML-ism) and is liked with imperialism.

The term is used to distinguish between workers in an imperialist country and workers in colonies and exploited empire. The latter were exploited and the profits were used to pay the first higher wages in order to quell direct revolutionary aspirations. In this sense everybody in the "western world" is considered labour aristocracy.

It has also been used specifically for some branched of unionisation where unskilled workers were not accepted in the union creating a stratification between union members aimed at creating a divide based on skill sets/education rather than the common interest of the working class.

In that sense the word can be stretched to crate a divide between wage and salary workers but only in the sense of unionisation.

The arguments in this thread rely heavily on wage disparity. This isn't what labour aristocracy means....and comes down to redefining the term.

But the redefinition only holds when disregarding changes in tax systems from nation to nation...as well as disregarding inherrent work hours and the status of overtime.

For example.

In the Netherlands a higher gross wage does not mean you actually have more money left after taxes. Your higher income may actually be lower or equal to that of people earning a lower gross wage because of the tax brackets.

This for example mean that a couple of years ago my girlfriend made €700 less than me in gross wages but after taxes I earned €150 more than her whereas my work hours were 15% longer because of the job description. Which meant that recalculated on an hourly wage...I actually made less per hour than her.

[Thirsty Crow]

Labor aristocracy is predominantly a marxist-leninist term (Although it predates ML-ism) and is liked with imperialism.

It's ironic that the most insightful and useful use of the concept was by the radical left of primarily German and Dutch social democracy, and it was used in that way (as I sketched in previous posts) through the 20s and even in the 30s by council communists. I think the concept retains its usefulness even today.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I see. I think the issue is that the labor aristocracy only receives attention from third worldists, which has allowed them to redefine the concept.

The power you're talking about is difficult to pin down because of how informal a shape it can take, in some cases it can just come down to how well a person was able to manipulate workplace interactions compared to everyone else. I think the proliferation of immaterial labor has also confused it, add to that a lack familiarity with that sort of workplace environment as well, and you can get to a point where simply owning a car or computer is enough to place one into the ranks of the labor aristocracy :lol:

[PhoenixAsh]

It's ironic that the most insightful and useful use of the concept was by the radical left of primarily German and Dutch social democracy, and it was used in that way (as I sketched in previous posts) through the 20s and even in the 30s by council communists. I think the concept retains its usefulness even today.

To some extent it does but the interpretations of what it means vary so much that it is often used out of context and with different applications by the various political streams.

In a generalist sense you could extrapolate that the stratification between workers creates a hierarchy of benefits that is aimed at creating false class.consciousness through the creation of a subsection that benefits (in)directly from the current system. The stratification is based on different factors of which skill is a component.....but also significance to the economy of a specific branche. .

The development of this stratification of labour was significantly different in parts of Europe in comparison to other parts with respect to skill and training. In Germany for example it was predominantly related to metal work and unskilled labor there was compensated much more than other sections.

[newdayrising]

What exactly is the difference between a salary and a wage? I'm asking because in my native language we pretty much use the word for any periodic payment a worker receives, regardless of ammount or occupation.
One time I met an american who seemed really impressed that I lived on a salary. I remember thinking "doesn't most people? What does he live on, comissions, tips, begging?" I was too polite to ask though.
Is it that a wage is just any pay you get from a particular job and a salary means you have a contract and get paid per month or per week or whatever? If that alone made someone a labour aristocrat then the most workers in Brazil for instance are labour aristocrats. Which they obviously are not, so I'm still confused.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Theres more to it but its a move to having your wage calculated ahead of time on a weekly basis as opposed to an hourly basis. In theory it guarantees you 40 hours per week but in reality it normally forces you into unpaid overtime.

[Counterculturalist]

For the most part, simply put, a salaried employee receives a set fee regardless of the hours they work. Salaried positions tend to pay more and to carry higher prestige. As others have mentioned, however, the downside is that the amount of hours a salaried employee can be pressured into working is practically limitless; it is certainly rare for someone who earns a salary to be able to get away with showing up for work once or twice a week, for example.

An hourly wage is just that: a set amount of dollars earned by the hour. So if a wage earner works 30 hours one week and 40 the next, their pay will reflect this; a salaried employee will receive the same pay both weeks.

[newdayrising]

I see. I guess this distinction makes sense in the US but not in Brazil then. Here wages are pretty much always monthly. The legal minimum wage (which is actually called "salario mínimo") is per month.
Contracts establish a number of hours a day/week one has to work, but those are obligatory both for the worker and the boss, if you're late you get discounted, if you work more than that you get overtime.

[Mr. Piccolo]

White-collar workers who are upper level "coordinators" have more of a vested interest in the capitalist system than simply your average white-collar worker.

Top-level managers and corporate lawyers are what come to mind when I think of the "coordinator" class. It is not just their usually large incomes but also the fact that
their functions would, in many cases, be obsolete or less prestigious in a socialist society.

For example, if top managers are elected by the workers themselves, their power over the workers is reduced by the fact that the workers can (presumably) control how much they are paid, whether they keep their job, etc. This is in contrast to the almost royal authority they hold over workers in the present capitalist system.

[John Nada]

Stocks and dividends are irrelevant for a meaningful use of the term "labor aristocracy". You seem to be going in precisely this direction with the conclusion that income isn't the way to talk about social class, but the contradiction remains. A share in the stock and reception of (usually quite insubstantial dividends) in no way changes both a) the fundamental relation to capital and the capitalist class, and b) the relation to management at the workplace, micro level.Income alone doesn't determine class. There are proletarians who make more than some petit-bourgeois. Nevertheless they're still exploited for their labor, whereas the petit-bourgeois exploits proletarians but still has to work themselves.

I brought up stock because it is partial ownership of the means of production. Many unions have significant investments in the stock market. A minority of workers do own stock. It's very unlikely that the upper stratum of workers won't buy stock, at least in the US. If it's a sizable amount the companies they partially own could provide them with profits, yet not enough to stop working. Which is closer to the petit-bourgeoisie, though I'm not sure.

However, numerically most stockholders in the US own it in the form of retirement funds. Only a small percentage, the bourgeoisie, actually owns most stocks and bonds. Technically on paper they both own part of the means of production, however the former in practice is as much ownership as a bank account. It'd be absurd to claim that having a bank account alone is bourgeois.
The term labor aristocrat might be sensibly used for middle management types (not the faux management as a previous user brought to light), union officialdom and that increasingly rare types of workers retaining a good deal of power through knowledge at the site of work (in fact, you'd have more luck searching for this last type in non-white collar positions, perhaps in R&D, engineering and so on). What I find potentially damaging is that this misguided talk of labor aristocracy might, unintentionally, obfuscate the fundamental class relations on lines of the usual ideological division between white collar workers and blue collar workers (and this division is forcibly argued for by ruling class ideologues).Yeah, I don't think the blue/white collar is that useful alone in the context of classes. A lot of service jobs are basically like an assembly line.

It's funny that you mention engineers. Someone told me in the US in the 70's the engineers in their field were paid less than most the other workers, not much more than the drivers.

In the US there actually a law banning managers from joining unions, and managers are often exempt from some labor laws like overtime. Because of this people get promoted to manager, but do the exact same shit, often for less pay.
Oh yeah, and I don't think that notions like "salariat" are useful at all. They're best kept out of the discussion.I don't think it's useful either but OP brought it up. The concept of the salariat class sounds close to the labor aristocracy. That's probably what G4b3n and others meant, as opposed to workers who get a salary. In the US at least, careers considered "higher up" pay salaries, but not all salaried workers are in the upper-stratum. Often salaried workers end up getting paid less than if they had hourly wages. This might be the source of confusion.

Making a class that different because of a salary is like saying those with piecework, per diem and tips are all separate classes. They're not.
I see. I think the issue is that the labor aristocracy only receives attention from third worldists, which has allowed them to redefine the concept.

The power you're talking about is difficult to pin down because of how informal a shape it can take, in some cases it can just come down to how well a person was able to manipulate workplace interactions compared to everyone else. I think the proliferation of immaterial labor has also confused it, add to that a lack familiarity with that sort of workplace environment as well, and you can get to a point where simply owning a car or computer is enough to place one into the ranks of the labor aristocracyThe third-worldists seem to make the most noise about it, yet their version is racist, equates race/nationality with class, writes off the labor aristocracy(which for them is all white people) as hopelessly reactionary, revisionism that goes against the labor theory of value, uses the crude empiricism that liberals use, and is not shared by any Maoist orgs actually in the third-world(AFAIK).

I think the labor aristocracy can be a useful to explain things. However, the question is it's relevance with the rise of neoliberalism, unions in decline, the rise of new imperialists and neo-colonialism, and decline of jobs traditionally associated with it. It'd be interesting if it got an update or refuted.

[oneday]

Like G4B3n said, they are labour aristocrats. Probably one of the more difficult set of people to become class councious, because they have more luxuries and less things that they immediately worry about, compared to the blue-collar workers.

Here are some interesting counterexamples to this conception, from here (https://solidarity-us.org/node/129). This part of the article is focusing on the pay and skill of the workers, and not their relationship to management.


WHATEVER THE THEORETICAL and empirical problems with the economics of the labor aristocracy thesis, its defenders still claim that well paid workers have generally been more reformist and conservative in their politics than lower paid workers. They point to the example of mostly white New York City construction workers ("hardhats") attacking antiwar demonstrators in the Spring of 1970; and contrast them with the militancy and progressive politics of some of the recent "Justice for Janitors" campaigns.

A more systematic examination of the history of workers' struggles in the global North in the past century, however, does not bear out the claim that well paid workers are generally reformist or conservative, while poorly paid workers are more revolutionary or radical.

The most important counter-example is the Russian working class in the early 20th century. The backbone of Lenin's Bolsheviks (something he was most definitely aware of) were the best paid industrial workers in the Russian cities - skilled machinists in the largest factories. Lower paid workers, such as the predominantly female textile workers, were generally either unorganized or apolitical (until the beginnings of the revolution) or supported the reformist Mensheviks.(1)

In fact the mass base of the left, antiwar wing of the pre-First World War socialist parties and of the postwar revolutionary Communist parties were relatively well paid workers in the large metalworking industries. These workers led militant struggles against speedup and deskilling that became political struggles against conscription and the war.

German Communism became a mass movement when tens of thousands of well paid metal workers left the Independent Socialists and joined the Communists in 1921. The French and Italian Communists also became mass parties through the recruitment of thousands of machinists who led the mass strikes of the postwar period. These highly paid workers were also overrepresented in the smaller Communist parties of the United States and Britain.(2)

Well paid, although generally deskilled, workers in large scale industry continued to play a leading role in mass upsurges throughout the 20th century. During the CIO upsurge during the 1930s, relatively well paid workers in the U.S. auto, steel, rubber and other mass production industries, often with skilled industrial workers in the lead, spearheaded the creation of industrial unions that united skilled and unskilled, highly paid and poorly paid. Well paid and skilled workers were, again, over represented in radical and revolutionary organizations in the United States during the 1930s.(3)

Well paid workers were also in the vanguard of proto-revolutionary mass struggles in France (1968), Italy (1968-69), Britain (1967-75), and Portugal (1974-75). Relatively "aristocratic" workers in trucking, auto, telecommunications, public education and the postal service were at the center of the unofficial, wildcat strikes that shook U.S. industry between 1965 and 1975.

In France in 1995, well paid workers in telecommunications, public transport, postal, health care and education led the public sector strikes that mounted the first successful workers' struggles against neoliberalism. In the Fall of 2004, auto workers, some of the best paid in Germany, stood up to layoffs, defying their own union leaders in an unofficial strike.

In the U.S. working class during the past decade, relatively poorly paid workers (janitors, hotel workers, and grocery clerks) have engaged in strike actions much more frequently than relatively well paid workers. However, better paid workers - from UPS workers in 1997 to New York City transit workers in 2005 -- have not been absent from militant workplace struggles.

[o well this is ok I guess]

doesn't marx mention supervisory work somewhere in vol 3

[Zanters]

This makes no sense at all.

The original concept of the labor aristocracy was based on relative skill and position in organization such as the trade unions. I know it's a nice term to throw around, but it would be best if people actually knew what it meant.

And anyone imagining that office workers - no matter the internal stratification within that category - enjoy a privileged economic position and wages high enough to talk about a "labor aristocracy" is flat out wrong. As I sad, first thing is to distinguish between various white collar positions.
Labor aristocracy as according to Lenin, my original post does make sense. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia on labor aristocracy.


The increased profits enable these companies to pay higher wages to their employees "at home" (that is, in the developed world), thus creating a working class satisfied with their standard of living and not inclined to proletarian revolution

So, maybe I am missing something. Wouldn't a white collar worker lower in the socioeconomic stratification be more inclined to be class conscious than if she was higher? For example, a programmer getting paid 120k a year is more satisfied with life than a programmer getting paid 35k a year, thus the former seeing no need to be radical. Maybe I am not communicating clearly enough, or I have more to learn

[Varroun]

Sometimes its hard to distinguish regular Maoists from third-worldists. In my experience, the difference a lot of the time is third-worldists think even the 1st world lumpenproles are labor aristocrats while regular Maoists don't. Other then that they're almost virtually the same and full of the same nonsensical crap.

They moralize Marxism by trying to argue who is "prolier then thou". Which is why its hard to have an civil debate about it with them. If you disagree your just one of those 1st world labor aristocrats who love the sight of dying third worlders as you stuff your face with cheeseburgers!

[Zanters]

I am having trouble seeing the labor aristocracy not existing factually, and not just to Maoist and third worldist.

What is to explain wealthy countries exporting the workforce to the global south in order to have larger profits. It is this exporting of jobs that allows people in the wealthy country to experience higher wages. The "super profits" according to Lenin in his work on imperialism. Do American workers for company X not have better benefits than the workers of the same company, only in the global south?

[Varroun]

Lenin never said the entire/majority population of an imperialist country would be labor aristocratic. Maoists/third worldists take it way out context and its original meaning. He is talking about the leaders of Labor Unions and the Workers with positions of power over large amounts of other workers.

Marx himself wrote how wages are relative based on where you live. The material conditions allowed Western Europe to advance and develop faster then rest of the world. With their new found technology and the ushering in of Capitalism they were able to take control of less advanced countries to expand their economies and make their Capitalists rich. (You often see them come to conclusion they advanced faster because they were "superior" racially, but it was material conditions that allowed for this.)

Concessions were made out of the threat and blood, sweat, and tears of the working class. We now are seeing developing nations going through similar things developed nations went through decades ago. (think the reformist movements in China and Latin America)

Third Worldists and Maoists can't grasp the fact that not all countries/regions can develop at the same time. Thus when they see people in first world nations with better wages they automatically think they must be "bribed" and not just further developed so to speak.

Imperialism certainly exists and it does play a role in keeping some countries from developing but only the capitalist elite benefit from imperialism.

Did you make a ton of money from the Iraq War? No? Thats because your not a capitalist, the working class in the U.S. didn't benefit whatsoever from it, in fact they were hurt by it, it only helped rich capitalists.

[Tim Cornelis]

"If they survive by selling their labour power, then surplus value is extracted from their labour and therefore they are proletarian" This is just entirely wrong. It does not follow at all that if you sell your labour-power that surplus value is extracted. In so many cases this is not true at all.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

"If they survive by selling their labour power, then surplus value is extracted from their labour and therefore they are proletarian" This is just entirely wrong. It does not follow at all that if you sell your labour-power that surplus value is extracted. In so many cases this is not true at all.
Could you expand on that? It'd be useful to learn where I went wrong.

[oneday]

Could you expand on that? It'd be useful to learn where I went wrong.

I think he means like a pure supervisor position. They are paid from the surplus for the purposes of increasing production of the surplus producing workers, but do not produce surplus value themselves. Also police officers would fit the bill of a worker that sells his labor power but no surplus value is extracted.

[Tim Cornelis]

Surplus value is extracted not from a wage labour contract, which is just an agreement.

A CEO sells his labour-power, but is not a proletarian. Retail or cleaning or teaching or policing or fire fighting does not produce value. There's a lot of jobs that are necessary for profit to be realised that do not produce value.

[John Nada]

"If they survive by selling their labour power, then surplus value is extracted from their labour and therefore they are proletarian" This is just entirely wrong. It does not follow at all that if you sell your labour-power that surplus value is extracted. In so many cases this is not true at all.Could you expand on that? It'd be useful to learn where I went wrong.Selling labor power doesn't always produce surplus value. Labor power isn't always employed for commodity production, it doesn't always yield surplus value for the capitalist, nor is it always employed for productive labor. For example cops, bureaucrats, managers, entertainers, servants, criminals, solider, lawyers, ect.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I should watch my use of terms because this is something which I know. Thanks for clearing it up.

[Zanters]

Lenin never said the entire/majority population of an imperialist country would be labor aristocratic. Maoists/third worldists take it way out context and its original meaning. He is talking about the leaders of Labor Unions and the Workers with positions of power over large amounts of other workers.
.

I am going to need a source/quote on that from Lenin, because if I recall correctly, it was Engels who said that.

[Varroun]

"And in speaking of the British working class the bourgeois student of “British imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century” is obliged to distinguish systematically between the “upper stratum” of the workers and the “lower stratum of the proletariat proper”. The upper stratum furnishes the bulk of the membership of co-operatives, of trade unions, of sporting clubs and of numerous religious sects. To this level is adapted the electoral system, which in Great Britain is still “sufficiently restricted to exclude the lower stratum of the proletariat proper"! In order to present the condition of the British working class in a rosy light, only this upper stratum—which constitutes a minority of the proletariat—is usually spoken of. For instance, “the problem of unemployment is mainly a London problem and that of the lower proletarian stratum, to which the politicians attach little importance...” [9] He should have said: to which the bourgeois politicians and the “socialist” opportunists attach little importance."

"This clearly shows the causes and effects. The causes are: (1) exploitation of the whole world by this country; (2) its monopolist position in the world market; (3) its colonial monopoly. The effects are: (1) a section of the British proletariat becomes bourgeois; (2) a section of the proletariat allows itself to be led by men bought by, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie. The imperialism of the beginning of the twentieth century completed the division of the world among a handful of states, each of which today exploits (in the sense of drawing superprofits from) a part of the “whole world” only a little smaller than that which England exploited in 1858; each of them occupies a monopolist position in the world market thanks to trusts, cartels, finance capital and creditor and debtor relations; each of them enjoys to some degree a colonial monopoly (we have seen that out of the total of 75,000,000 sq. km., which comprise the whole colonial world, 65,000,000 sq. km., or 86 per cent, belong to six powers; 61,000,000 sq. km., or 81 per cent, belong to three powers)."

[John Nada]

I am going to need a source/quote on that from Lenin, because if I recall correctly, it was Engels who said that.


And in speaking of the British working class the bourgeois student of “British imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century” is obliged to distinguish systematically between the “upper stratum” of the workers and the “lower stratum of the proletariat proper”. The upper stratum furnishes the bulk of the membership of co-operatives, of trade unions, of sporting clubs and of numerous religious sects. To this level is adapted the electoral system, which in Great Britain is still “sufficiently restricted to exclude the lower stratum of the proletariat proper"! In order to present the condition of the British working class in a rosy light, only this upper stratum—which constitutes a minority of the proletariat—is usually spoken of. For instance, “the problem of unemployment is mainly a London problem and that of the lower proletarian stratum, to which the politicians attach little importance...” [9] He should have said: to which the bourgeois politicians and the “socialist” opportunists attach little importance. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch08.htm
The bourgeoisie of an imperialist “Great” Power can economically bribe the upper strata of “its” workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million. And how this little sop is divided among the labour ministers, “labour representatives” (remember Engels’s splendid analysis of the term), labour members of War Industries Committees,[5] labour officials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is a secondary question. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm

Lenin specifies that the aristocracy of labor is a small minority of workers in the upper stratum(often in trade union but not exclusively, such as office work), as well as their leaders. He also cites Engels as a proponent of this theory, though it was thought to be more of a British phenomenon due to Britain's vast colonial empire. He argued that with the rise of imperialism, it's now possible in more nations. Good jobs tend to go to "their own" nations' privileged workers, and crappy jobs are left for subjugated nationals, immigrants and minorities(though not exclusively). This was the age of colonialism and Jim Crow, after all.

Imperialist capitalism is not a problem for this stratum. Superexploitation of colonies and semi-colonies enabled the labor aristocracy to get the comfortable jobs. This upper stratum can take on the role of the bourgeoisie's class allies at the expense of the majority of the oppressed masses. Focusing on the labor aristocracy was opportunism on part of the unions and bourgeois labor parties, to the detriment of the vast majority of workers, according to Lenin.

He thought communist should try to win the support of the majority that does not benefit from capitalism. Not to look at the upper stratum as the most advance just because they're winning all these concessions because the bourgeoisie can now afford it, but the lower stratum that get periodically thrown into unemployment and hit with the blunt of capitalist exploitation.

Doesn't sound too bad of a theory. It's not every single "first-worlder" but a small minority at top. But I caution against turning the tendency towards siding with reaction into a guaranteed thing. It's entirely possible for other classes or individuals thereof to go against their immediate class interest and form an alliance with the proletariat, if not to eventually turn into proletarians themselves.

[Varroun]

I would also like to say that Lenin seemed overly pessimistic towards unions.(I think this could be due to his lack of experience with unions since they weren't really big in Russia) He didn't think they were revolutionary even though this is demonstrably false. The German steel workers were criticized as being too privileged but they by and large represented a good bulk of the revolutionary forces.

Also since unions are far more common now, (and often are anti-worker sell outs) it doesn't hold up as much.

[A.J.]

How do Third Worldists explain the fact that the memberships of a lot of "western" communist parties(such as here in Britian) consisted mainly of the mostly highly organised and skilled workers(and therefore most well-to-do)?

According to their theory this section of the working class would be the least receptive to the appeal of communism. However, in reality very much the opposite was true.

[Luís Henrique]

A must read for those interested in this subject is Harry Braverman's classic Labour and Monopoly Capital (http://www.unc.edu/~jbecks/comps/pdf/braverman.pdf) (complete and free and online).

Luís Henrique

[Zanters]

Do third world is believe that proletarians in the first world are unable to support the revolution, and that only proles from the most desolate countries can?

[DOOM]

Do third world is believe that proletarians in the first world are unable to support the revolution, and that only proles from the most desolate countries can?

IIRC third-worldists believe that first-world workers are paid way above the value of their labor with the money imperialist powers exploit from third-world workers. This means that western workers are benefiting from imperialist capitalism and have therefore no interest in sublating such a system.

[Varroun]

Depends, some think that they should send supplies the third world while others believe that this would cause them to become dependent and rely on the shipments.

Most say they want to raise class consciousness as much as possible but in practice they almost never do. They are content to chat amongst themselves about how much they hate first worlders.

Besides, do you really think anyones going to want to listen to people who are calling them fat, spoiled leeches just for existing?

[A.J.]

Here's quite an insightful article on the subject;

http://mltranslations.org/Germany/Employee.htm

[Comrade Jacob]

Pretty privileged ones, but yes.

[DOOM]

I wonder whether the distinction between productive and unproductive workers matters. In global context it probably doesn't mean that much, as (and correct me if I'm wrong) the relevance of unproductive workers and the so called service sector are mainly a first world thing.
But if we focus on Europe, does this distinction matter? Are unproductive workers part of the revolutionary subject?

[DOOM]

Here's quite an insightful article on the subject;

http://mltranslations.org/Germany/Employee.htm


If one assigns any kind of significance to the question of the creation of surplus-value in the class analysis, then one comes unquestionably to the most absurd conclusions: if a locomotive driver drives a freight train on one day, and a passenger train on another day, then one must count him on the first day as part of the proletariat, since his labor adds value to the commodities by their transportation, while on the other day as part of the petty bourgeoisie, since his labor in performing a service creates no value.

This is a pretty stupid example, as the locomotive driver could create value in both situations. A commodity doesn't need to be tangible. What matters is whether he does this on behalf of a capitalist or not.