@Third-worldists: how do you feel about austerity cuts?

[Thug Lessons]

I was being overly simplistic for the sake of the conversation, but I'm done with this discussion. I'm not sure why I've stayed involved in it for as long as I have. Although Tony Cliff rejected the theory of the 'labor aristocracy' so I'm not sure why your invoking him her. Anyways have a good day, sorry for running out on a discussion, but I'm not that interested in polemics with 3rd worldists.

He "rejected labor aristocracy" in the sense that he didn't think it went far enough in Lenin's formulation. To quote the article I linked:

"An inevitable conclusion following upon Lenin’s analysis of Reformism is that a small thin crust of conservatism hides the revolutionary urges of the mass of the workers. Any break through this crust would reveal a surging revolutionary lava. The role of the revolutionary party is simply to show the mass of the workers that their interests are betrayed by the “infinitesimal minority” of “aristocracy of labour”. This conclusion, however, is not confirmed by the history of Reformism in Britain, the United States and elsewhere over the past half century: its solidity, its spread throughout the working class, frustrating and largely isolating all revolutionary minorities, makes it abundantly clear that the economic, social roots of Reformism are not in “an infinitesimal minority of the proletariat and the working masses” as Lenin argued."

[Questionable]

Most of what Thug Lessons has said is quite simply tiresome stuff that I've already talked about with PigmerikanMao. I won't go over them again simply because s/he finds them "unreadable" and "trivial."

Seriously, what is it with you people? I've never encountered a tendency more hostile to discussion third-worldists. I believe I've spoken to about five third-worldists (All on the internet, of course), and the only one who didn't explode into rage after I questioned them was PigmerikanMao, and his views differ from the other ones I've met so he's probably less dogmatic.

The reason Thug Lessons finds my posts "trivial" is because third-worldism only functions as a generalized, abstract, and moralistic theory. It's very easy for them to say "Look around you at all the wealth we have, something must be wrong, it must be that we're parasites!" But as soon as you start bringing up concrete evidence and statistics, they start complaining about how you're "too dogmatic" and you just "don't get it" and you're focusing on "trivialities." Third-worldism is about rejection of evidence; reject Marx for being "outdated," reject modern-day evidence for being "trivial," reject critics for being "close-minded" or "first-worldists." It's the exact same dynamic we see from religious or racist folks. There's some invisible outside force that's keeping them down, and if only that force could be removed, everyone would see how right they are.

I can't prove this, but I think it's pretty clear that third-worldism functions on an emotional level rather than an objective one. Thug Lesson's constant hostility shows that s/he's intimately connected to third-worldism, and probably isn't going to be open to discussion the way someone like PigmerikanMao was. Thug Lessons has an emotional grudge against the world, and they want a theory that justifies that grudge, not an actual explanation of the world. You can even see this emotionalism in the way they post; talking about class struggle in the West is "kvetching."

Anyway, onto their actual posts (The parts I feel are worth responding to, I won't waste my time addressing their moralistic rants):

You might want to disagree with me, but in fact you don't have to convince me, I'm already a communist, you have to convince the 90% of first world citizens who think that, for the most part, capitalism has delivered on its promise to create prosperity and at most needs more social-democratic reforms. And you aren't doing a very good job of that. Marxism, anarchism and all the rest are entirely marginal and have been for decades, and their programs are overwhelmingly viewed as either utopian fantasy or a bill of goods. They aren't buying it, because when a bourgeois critic says, "Marx might have been relevant to the 1800s, when people worked 12 hour days for penny wages, but he didn't realize how much things would change", that rings true for most people. Capitalism in the West hasn't shared its profits equally, and it hasn't given us fulfilling work, but it also hasn't made things so bad that revolution is the only viable alternative.

It's a shame that workers in the West subscribe to the false consciousness of the bourgeoisie, but the ideals of an epoch are the ideals of its ruling class. Every Marxist knows we need to break through the bourgeois hegemony in order to introduce revolutionary ideals to the working class, this is what Lenin's vanguard theory was all about. The difference is that third-worldists take this to the extreme by saying that false consciousness is actually proof of a change in the productive relations of capitalism, when it's really just that; false consciousness.

As to the suggestion that capital hasn't shared any of its imperial profits with its workers, there's a recent book out by Zak Cope, a third worldist author, that gives a strong case that relatively high first world wages can't be explained entirely in terms of productivity. They're being inflated somehow, and imperialism is the best answer as far as I'm concerned. The ball is in the first worldists' court now, and it's their responsibility to answer both the bourgeois objections they've ignored and the third worldist response they reject, not to endlessly quibble about trivialities like the OP is doing.

Who is this Zak Cope person and why should I care what he thinks? After a brief google search I couldn't find anything about him except some reviews posted on (Surprise!) third-worldist blogs and websites.

There's a dozen books out there proving a dozen things every day. As Lenin said, "in view of the extreme complexity of the phenomena of social life it is always possible to select any number of examples or separate data to prove any proposition."

You said "surplus from the third-world does not go to workers in the West". Really? Really? This just blows my mind. Marxists are behind even the liberals here, because even the liberals will admit Westerners are benefiting for sweatshop labor, trade imbalances, and a whole host of other things. American is the richest nation in the world, gets massive commodity imports for pennies on the dollar, uses up more than 25% of the world's oil with less than 5% of its population, and you're going to tell me nobody except the super-rich benefit from this at all? Workers don't get a single dime? It's just an absurdity. Again even liberals get this, it's just Marxists who want to quibble.

More generalized models. I've already stressed the importance of WHERE the surplus is distributed a dozen times, but I give up because I guess I'm just going to be ignored whenever I point out how less than 40% of Americans own the actual wealth in the nation. Third-worldists suffer from arithmophobia, it seems.

The surplus from the third-world does not go into workers, yes, it goes into investment which makes the country "artificially" advanced. The exploitation of third-world workers can also allow for more commodities to appear on Western markets, true, but that does not establish a parasitic relationship or prove the existence of a third non-proletariat class. Quite the opposite, really.

all I can do is quote Engels telling British socialists how they were deluding themselves, exactly like you're deluding yourself now.

There's a great deal of dishonesty coming from you here. Allow me to post the full context of this quote:

The Manifesto of the Democratic Federation* in London has been issued by about twenty to thirty little societies which under different names (always the same people) have for the last twenty years at least been repeatedly trying, and always with the same lack of success, to make themselves important. All that is important is that now at last they are obliged openly to proclaim our theory, which during the period of the International seemed to them to be dictated from outside, as their own, and that a crowd of young bourgeois intelligentsia are emerging who, to the disgrace of the English workers it must be said, understand things better and take them up more passionately than the workers. For even in the Democratic Federation the workers for the most part only accept the new programme unwillingly and as a matter of form. The chief of the Democratic Federation, Hyndman, is an arch-conservative and an extremely chauvinistic but not stupid careerist, who behaved pretty shabbily to Marx (to whom he was introduced by Rudolf Meyer) and for this reason was dropped by us personally.

Do not on any account whatever let yourself be deluded into thinking there is a real proletarian movement going on here. I know Liebknecht tries to delude himself and all the world about this, but it is not the case. The elements at present active may become important since they have accepted our theoretical programme and so acquired a basis, but only if a spontaneous movement breaks out here among the workers and they succeed in getting control of it. Till then they will remain individual minds, with a hotch-potch of confused sects, remnants of the great movement of the 'forties, standing behind them and nothing more. And--apart from the unexpected--a really general workers' movement will only come into existence here when the workers are made to feel the fact that England's world monopoly is broken.

Participation in the domination of the world market was and is the basis of the political nullity of the English workers. The tail of the bourgeoisie in the economic exploitation of this monopoly but nevertheless sharing in its advantages, politically they are naturally the tail of the "great Liberal Party," which for its part pays them small attentions, recognises trade unions and strikes as legitimate factors, has relinquished the fight for an unlimited working day and has given the mass of better placed workers the vote. But once America and the united competition of the other industrial countries have made a decent breach in this monopoly (and in iron this is coming rapidly, in cotton unfortunately not as yet) you will see something here.

Now, as we can see, Engels is both railing against a specific political organization that he dislikes and bemoaning a period of low revolutionary consciousness.

You posted this quote as if it proves third-worldism true, but it really does nothing to support the main tenets of third-worldism. Engels does not say that they are no longer proletarians, he does not say they have a parasitic relationship, he does not say they are paid above the value of their work, he does say that a bad time in Britain's economy would lead to unrest among the workers, which is true.

I love that question by the way, because it's like the lefty equivalent of "have you stopped beating your wife?" If you're from a poor country obviously you're just a reactionary nationalist with no working class solidarity, and if you're from a rich country obviously you're a posh middle-class brat who's never worked a day in her life. Damned if you do and damned if you don't! It even works on commies in general! If you're a poor socialist you're just jealous of your betters, if you're a rich communist you're out of touch with "real" poors. Ad hominem funtimes all around.

This post is really confusing, dodges the question, and just doesn't make very much sense at all, but overall it's pretty funny that you accuse Marxists of having black-and-white thinking because I've seen very much the same attitude from third-worldists. Either you believe that the entire Western world is full of parasites, or you're some juvenile wannabe revolutionary who thinks communism is right around the corner. Entire schools of thought are branded as "first-worldist" and pretty much ignored.

Overall, the most important thing to take away from this is that third-worldism is still begging the question. Despite what Thug Lessons seems to think, the ball is most certainly not "in our court," it is in theirs to prove this parasitic relationship they keep invoking and to prove that Western workers are paid above the value of their labor. The closest thing I've gotten as proof was an abstract equation that did not work. We can exchange quotes about the labor aristocracy until we faint, but until the base of their theory is proven, it doesn't matter.

I may continue debating with Thug Lessons, I may not. Judging by their exchange with 9mm, they're very close-minded and are more interested in (feebly) attempting to make their opponents look like fools. I'm not going to waste my time speaking with a person like that, and really, their childish hostility only serves to take away credibility from third-worldism in the first place.

[Zulu]

Frankly, this "false consciousness" horse is so dead, that it reeks of decomposition quite terribly.

[Lord Testicles]

Frankly, this "false consciousness" horse is so dead, that it reeks of decomposition quite terribly.

Frankly, this thread is so dead, that it reeks of decomposition quite terribly.

[motion denied]

hey Zulu do you still think cars are means of production and people who own them are labor aristocrats