Round 3 of 4: First Worldist Hoxhaists versus Maoist-Third Worldists: On the First World “working class” and on reading Marx
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
Recently, a debate took place between First Worldist Hoxhaists and Maoist-Third Worldists. This debate touched on many areas. Two of the main issues was 1. whether there is a First World proletariat and 2. what Marx thought about the subject. Maoism-Third Worldism is the fourth stage of revolutionary science. One of the big advances of Maoism-Third Worldism is its global class analysis. According to this analysis, there is no significant proletariat left in the First World.
In this debate, the First Worldist Hoxhaists maintain that there is indeed a First World proletariat. The First World Hoxhaists provided no serious argument for their views. Instead, they relied on their mis-readings of Marx quotes. By contrast, Maoist-Third Worldists brought science to bear on the topic. Several articles were provided that prove statistically that there is no significant proletariat in the First World. Yet the Hoxhaists ignored all substantial arguments, choosing to simply repeat their dogma. Taking a scientific approach, Maoist-Third Worldists have shown that 1. there is no significant proletariat in the First World and 2. any serious reading of Marx agrees with Maoism-Third Worldism. Readers should contrast the styles of the First Worldist Hoxhaists to the Maoist-Third Worldists in this debate. It is a good lesson in idealism versus science.
First Worldist Hoxhaist Johnson:
“Firstly, ones class is determined by ones relation to the means of production. The proletariat has traditionally been defined as someone who does not own a means of production of his own and must sell his labor to survive. You are revising this analysis to include the idea that all proletariat must be exploited, as opposed to Marx who merely stated that the proletariat sell labor and work the means of production to survive.
That said, if the workers in the first world are not an exploited class, and hence not proletariat.. what exactly are they? What classes exist in the first world?
That said, one must ask, what purpose does labor aristocracy serve in the eyes of the bourgeois? The sole purpose is to stabilize conditions in the first world in which they are based. The First world is only reactionary because of the material conditions in which they exist. When these material conditions deteriorate as the third world liberates itself the proletariat in the first world WILL become a revolutionary class, and the existence of a vanguard party will be necessary. This is a position that was held by Stalin in the ‘Foundations of Leninism’, continues to be held by Hoxhaists today, and no materialist analysis has thoroughly refuted.”
Maoist-Third Worldist Prairie Fire responds:
“Marx may not be the alpha-and-omega of class, but he is still the alpha, the best place to start. First Worldists have often claimed that “one’s class is determined by one’s relation to the means of production” is the end-all-be-all to understanding class. However, this particular aspect of class is one of many. Marx himself had much more to say about class. Getting into a silly debate over the use of the term “proletariat” is not of interest to revolutionary scientists. It is incorrect to conflate the proletariat as a revolutionary agent with the working class generally. Marx may have been guilty of this conflation himself, especially in his works that are more geared for popular consumption. In any case, Marx did not consider all workers part of the proletariat as the revolutionary subject. This is a key point because communists are, after all, not interested in class as an academic exercise. Marxism is scientific socialism. The scientific approach generates correct predictions and explains the social alignments that generate and hinder revolution. Communists seek to understand class scientifically in order to seize power and eliminate all oppression.
Marx’s concept of the proletariat is very much tied to the ideas of exploitation and immiseration, which are central topics in his work. Even in Marx’s popular works, such as the Manifesto, he is clear that the proletariat is part of the class that has nothing but its labor to sell in order to survive. The proletarian makes only enough income today to reproduce her labor tomorrow. She has nothing to lose but her chains; she has a world to win. The common threads running through these descriptions of the proletariat is that the proletariat is exploited and exists in a state of misery under the current mode of production. Marx’s paradigmatic member of the proletariat is even more narrow. The paradigmatic proletarian is one who only engages in productive labor, labor that creates value and adds to the global social product. These descriptions basically characterized the industrial working class of Marx’s day, but these descriptions clearly don’t describe the working class of the United States or First World generally. Virtually every First World worker earns far more than subsistence. They earn far more than what it costs to reproduce their labor from day to day. Many are salaried, not wage earners at all. Most of them have plenty more to sell than their own labor. Most have land, houses, cars, savings, etc. In fact, it is not unusual for First World workers to have more potential capital, more access to capital, than many Third World capitalists. This effect is magnified even more by the relative ease with which First World peoples gain access to large amounts of credit. Significantly, First World workers also receive a share of imperialist superprofits extracted from the Third World–just because they are from the First World. Furthermore, First World workers are generally not involved in productive labor as Marx’s model proletarian is. Rather, First World people are employed in non-value-creating positions such as management, merchant capital enterprises, white-collar work, distribution, the service industry, etc. They are often employed in positions that are purely parasitic and drain value. Also, they are often employed in work that may be necessary to realize value, but is not itself value creating.
In Marx’s abstract models of capitalism, competition in the market and the equalization of technique amongst producers leads to declining wages. In the model, wages approach the cost of reproducing labor–subsistence or even sub-subsistence levels. This is why Marx equated the value of labor power with bare subsistence-level wages. Again, this does not describe the First World. It does, however, describe the capitalist side of Third World economies. The median yearly income of a household in the US was $46,326 in 2006. For families in the US it was $56,194. By contrast, in global median is about $2.50 a day. There are more people in India earning less than $0.80 a day than people living in the USA. When we look at Marx’s treatment of class in its entirety, there is no way that one can count First World workers as part of the revolutionary class. Yet Marx’s description of the proletariat fits Indian wage earners to a T. Marx’s description of the proletariat matches up with the Third World worker generally. One doesn’t need Marx to know that people rebel when they truly suffer. Exploitation and immiseration are at the heart of why the proletariat revolts. To cling to the First Worldist concept of class is to chuck reality to the wind in favor of metaphysics. The reason so many First Worldists do just this is that they are intellectually lazy and they aren’t really concerned with science. They are not concerned with predicting and explaining the world as it is. Instead, they cut the toes to fit the shoe. They look at the world through First Worldist lenses and wonder why nothing ever works out as their idealism predicts. There is a key methodological difference between our materialism and the idealism of First Worldism.
What purpose does labor aristocracy serve in the eyes of the bourgeoisie? First Worldists often claim that workers are exploited. However, the First Worldists never provide any kind of bar to establish what counts as exploitation in the real world. Instead, they engage in a kind of metaphysics based on a vulgar understanding of Marx. First Worldists incorrectly argue that because First World workers are hired, they must be creating surplus value, they must be exploited. Marx rightly mocks such a blockhead view in Theories of Surplus Value. The First Worldist argument is based on an incorrect understanding of Marx’s labor theory of value. Marx recognized in Capital that not all workers create value or surplus value. Not all workers are a source of profit. For example, a bank hires tellers, but the tellers do not create value, nor does the bank make its profits by exploiting tellers. Marx uses the example of merchant capital chains in Capital Vol. 3. A clerk in a merchant’s store does not produce value. Even a CEO can be paid in a wage or a salary form. Are we to conclude that a CEO who does not own stock, who does not own the means of production, yet earns millions of dollars in wages, is part of the proletariat? Of course not. If there is no reason to allow the hypothetical CEO into the proletariat, then there is no principled reason to let in the First World worker. The CEO may be necessary for the realization of value under the current capitalist mode of production but does not create value himself. Similarly, most people in the United States are employed doing non-productive work.
Of course the labor aristocracy stabilizes the situation in the First World. In the First World, the labor aristocracy’s contradiction with its bourgeoisie is non-antagonistic. In other words, the bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy are allies in their fight against the Third World. The First World labor aristocracy aligns with the other imperialist classes against the Third World proletariat and Third Word allies. The First World labor aristocracy is not a part of the proletariat in any meaningful sense. When the conditions of the First World labor aristocracy have degenerated, it has historically veered toward fascism, not toward socialism. Anyone who takes an honest look at the history can see this. One can see it every day. The poorest segments of the White nation, for example, militantly defend their privileged status vis-à-vis Mexican labor. Johnson says that the labor aristocracy will one day become a proletariat when conditions degenerate to the point that the Third World cuts off the First World. In Maoist-Third Worldist circles, this old line is called the reproletarianization thesis. Firstly, even if this were true, it would be incorrect to organize around the class interests of the labor aristocracy today because one day members of that class may fall into the proletariat. One doesn’t organize around bourgeois class interests today because one day members of that class may fall into the proletariat. The labor aristocracy is an enemy class. One does not agitate for the enemy. The First World labor aristocracy’s interests align against the proletariat in the Third World. To organize on behalf of the labor aristocracy (to advance the economic interests of First World workers) is to work against Third World proletarians. Johnson is correct that real communists do have contempt for the class enemy. The class of the labor aristocracy is opposed to the class of the proletariat. Real communists stand squarely against the First World worker, the First World labor aristocrat. Secondly, there has never been an example of a First World, socialist revolution. During the last great wave of revolutions beginning around World War 2, every single revolution has been in the Third World. And prior to that, the Bolshevik revolution did not take place in advanced Germany, but it the weak link of the capitalist system, in Russia. The one exception, the one time when socialists came to power in the First World, is when the Red Army invaded Germany during World War II. Stalin did not wait for the Germans to rise up against Hitler’s world war. Rather, Stalin imposed a dictatorship over the German labor aristocracy at bayonet point.
It was Lenin who criticized the German and French social democrats when they supported the war efforts of their imperialist homelands during World War I. By so doing, the revisionists placed their own peoples, their own working class, ahead of the global proletariat. Lenin, by contrast, advocated the policy of revolutionary defeatism. Lenin sought the defeat of the Czarist empire in the hope that a defeat for his imperialist homeland could lead to a revolutionary situation. Contrary to Lenin, the revisionists of the Second International were the social imperialists and the social fascists of their day. They were socialist in name, but in reality, they were imperialists. Today, First Worldism is the main form of social imperialism and social fascism. First Worldists may use Marxist and socialist rhetoric, but, in reality, they seek to advance the interests of their populations at the expense of the vast majority of humanity. Like Lenin before, Maoism-Third Worldism represents the interests of the proletariat and oppressed as a whole. Just as Lenin made the break from the kind of narrow, unimaginative, dogmatic thinking of his day, so does every real revolutionary scientist, so too does Maoism-Third Worldism. It is no surprise that Maoism-Third Worldism is universally condemned by the imperialists and social-imperialists.
How do First World workers become bought-off? The global economy is a causal nexus where value in various forms is transferred around the globe from one person to another. If someone receives more of the global social product, someone else is receiving less. This is implicit in the Labor Theory of Value. There are causal mechanisms transfer value from the Third World to the First World. For example, the very land under the feet of Amerikans was acquired through plunder. Even prior to the modern period, since the founding of the Amerikan colonies, Euro/White settler society unified to plunder their Indigenous neighbors. Settler workers banded with their own ruling class in order to acquire land by waging genocide against the Indigenous. J. Sakai points to impressive data that shows how the settler worker usually graduated to land owner very quickly in Amerikan colonial society. This class mobility prevented the consolidation of a proletarian class in Amerikan colonial society. Rather, settler privileges and the promise of land resulted in the lack of a proletariat. The lower strata of colonial society were often the most militantly anti-Indigenous. One of the main issues that led to the war of independence was the contradiction between the colonial poor seeking to plunder more Indigenous land and the British who did not want to pay for more conflicts with the Indigenous. The resources of the Third World and captive nations continue to be plundered. Benefits from this can accrue to the Amerikan worker. Another mechanism is the phenomenon of unequal exchange. Global markets are arranged so that the ratio of purchasing power to work varies greatly across countries. This results from how global markets are structured and through unequal treaties. When trade exists under such circumstances, value is transferred from Third World workers to the First World workers. This process is invisible to most people but creates vast disparities on a world scale.
What is the size of the labor aristocracy in the First World? First Worldist organizations, in typical stye, just pull their estimates out of thin air. They have no scientific basis for their claims. The size of the labor aristocracy is linked to the question of who is and who is not exploited. In order to establish the size the labor aristocracy, a usable bar for what counts as exploitation needs to be established. Then, once that bar is established, those who fall above the bar are labor aristocrats because they are non-exploited workers. And, if they are non-exploited then they are de facto net-exploiters. If they are not exploited, then their privilege is a result of some mechanism of value transfer; value has been transferred from the unfortunate worker to the fortunate one, the labor aristocrat. This is a logical consequence of the Labor Theory of Value. Because the global market is a causal nexus where one person’s benefit is another’s loss. Those who gain may not be members of the bourgeoisie in all senses, but they are thoroughly bourgeoisified. And, increasingly, Amerikan workers are coming to own the means of production itself. More and more have investments, pensions, retirement accounts, Social Security, annuities, life insurance, etc. There are various ways to calculate the size of the labor aristocracy. Any approach to this question has to be scientific, not arbitrary. One way to calculate the size of the labor aristocracy is to establish a value for labor and use that to establish the bar for who is and who is not exploited among wage earners or other demographics. Another way is to invoke a materially grounded, socialist principle for global distributive justice. Then use the global, socialist distribution (or egalitarian or near egalitarian) of important goods as a bar. We have produced numerous articles on the topic (click on economics category at the bottom of the front page of the blog). MIM has produced its own method to quantify the size of the labor aristocracy. They have a lengthy book and several magazines on the subject. Different approaches, if scientific, will point to an underlying reality. All Maoist-Third Worldist approaches point to the same truth: There is no reasonable standard by which the First World worker is exploited.
There’s real Marxism and then there is the shallow stuff that passes for Marxism. The universe doesn’t care whether you like what you see. There is nothing as radical as reality itself. Maoism-Third Worldism is what reality demands.
Here is a short list of online writings, in no particular order, on the topic of the labor aristocracy. The Hoxhaists might want to read up on the topic:
1. Real versus Fake Marxism on Socialist Distribution: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/real-versus-fake-marxism-on-socialist-distribution/
2. Global Inequality or Socialist Equality: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/global-inequality-and-socialist-equality/
3, A rough estimate of the value of labor by Serve the People of IRTR: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/blast-of-the-past-from-irtr-a-rough-estimate-of-the-value-of-labor/
4. The Average Joe Amerikkkan: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/the-average-joe-amerikan/
5. The High cost of living in the Third World: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2007/08/16/high-cost-of-living-in-the-third-world/
6. A Maoist-Third Worldist Position on Unequal Exchange: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/a-maoist-third-worldist-position-on-unequal-exchange/
7. Dear Maoist-Third Worldist.. are First World “workers” more productive?: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/dear-maoist-third-worldist-are-first-worlders-more-productive/
8. Amerikkkans rich, Indians poor, so-called “ICM” deaf and dumb: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/amerikkkans-rich-indians-poor-so-called-icm-deaf-and-dumb/
9. Notes on Exploitation, Distribution and Method: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/notes-on-exploitation-distribution-and-method/
10. MIM materials: http://prisoncensorship.info/archive/
11. Edwards Labor Aristocracy, Mass Base of Social Democracy http://prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/contemp/whitemyths/edwards/index.html
12. J. Sakai Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/10/28/17790131.php
13. Lin Biao Long Live Victory of People’s War! : http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/lin-biao/1965/09/peoples_war/
14. On Exploitation for the nth time: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/on-exploitation-and-other-stuff-for-the-nth-time/
15. Zero-Sum game assumption: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/dear-maoist-third-worldist-zero-sum-game-assumption/
16. Arghiri Emmanuel, Socialist Project in a Disintegrated Capitalist World: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/miws-reprint-the-socialist-project-in-a-disintegrated-capitalist-world-by-arghiri-emmanuel/
17. Some tentative thoughts on “the social factory” (read the comments in this thread): http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/some-tentative-thoughts-on-“the-social-factory”/
18. Why are Amerikans hired? http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/dear-maoist-third-worldist-why-are-amerikkkans-hired/”
First Worldist Hoxhaist Endruj Lusha:
“Now I ask again where in the world did you manage to twist what Engels and Lenin were saying about a minority in the working class to paint it as a bourgeois entity, rather than priviledged workers with reactionary ideas? Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital blows your whole argument out of the water. Marx states:
“A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.” (Marx)
Being proletarian is not a standard of how big your check is, it is your relative position to the means of production in society, seeing as how even these labor aristocrats do not even form the capacity to own labour they are still members of the working class, barring the union leadership which actually does not operate in the workplace and does administrative work, which would be members of the petty-bourgeoisie if not bourgeoisie.
“Evidence please? Asserting something is not proving it. Marxists are scientific socialists. As such, we do not just pull assertions out of hats, we use scientific methods to prove our assertions.” (Prairie Fire)
It is hard to say, since I do not have labor statistics to back me up but it would be very small, because most of the American labor force is unskilled and in the service sector. I would say the labor aristocracy is in construction, high paid skilled workers in industry, transportation by rail, and the top echelons of financial, commercial and goverment sectors as well as the trade union bureacracy, and seeing as how these fields are dominated by whites, especially construction then it is safe to say that the majority of the labor aristocracy are white Americans.
“All you have shown here is that you have memorized some dogma.” (Prairie Fire)
Right…this “dogma” is defining what the labor aristocracy is in the U.S. which are the highest paid workers with priviledges granted to them by the bourgeoisie, unless this definition changed then it is no dogma. I still want to know how ALL the American working class are bourgeois, how exactly is a worker from McDonalds or Wal-Mart, who don’t even belong to a union and recieve wages that cannot sustain their livelihood “able to purchase the means of production” or a member of the bourgeoisie?
The notion of class determined by the means of production is HOW Marxists define class.
“Getting into a silly debate over the use of the term “proletariat” is not of interest to revolutionary scientists. ” (Prairie Fire)
It is necessary to combat psuedo-marxist ideas which lay a blanket on all of the supposed first world as being entirely made up of bourgeois, even if these members have no relation to the means of production. Their ideology is irrelevant, if they are reactionary workers, then they are reactionary WORKERS they are not a bourgeois just because they think like a bourgeois monopolist does not mean they have the power to control the employment of others or participate in government operations against poor nations. A person who acts, walks and squeels like a Pig still is not a Pig.
“The common threads running through these descriptions of the proletariat is that the proletariat is exploited and exists in a state of misery under the current mode of production.” (Prairie Fire)
No its not, again I refer to the House analogy in Wage-Labour and Capital, it is all relative and on class conciousness of the relative powerless the proletariat have. People do not rebel because of their misery, that is why you never saw the Blacks Slaves rebel en masse to their condition, in fact oppressed groups tend to rationalize their oppression, they rebel because they are expected something better than the present.
Karl Marx states:
“A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.” (Karl Marx)
“Virtually every First World worker earns far more than subsistence. ” (Prairie Fire)
Oh no, that is just ridiculous. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the US and Mexico, in both nations it pays its workers minimum wage. The Center for Women’s Welfare at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work found the preferred yearly income for the cost of living in Oregon for an adult and one child is around 25K to 37K in Multnomah County, Clackamas County and Washington County but the state’s minimum wage is $7.95, which would be $16,790 a year, most workers . I barely even make it by 15 dollars an hour, and thats double the minimum wage. The study took only basic costs into equation which included housing, food, taxes, transportation, child care and health care.
“They earn far more than what it costs to reproduce their labor from day to day. ” (Prairie Fire)
Statistics to back that up please? [editor's note: statistics were provided, several times in the endnotes. The Hoxhaists just didn't bother looking them up.]
“Many are salaried, not wage earners at all.” (Prairie Fire)
We are talking about the proletariat here not salaried petty-bourgeois managers.
“Most have land, houses, cars, savings, etc. ” (Prairie Fire)
Depends how you slice it. Whites as a whole 75% home ownership, Asians 60%, Latinos 49.5%, Blacks 48%, Native American 58%.
“In fact, it is not unusual for First World workers to have more potential capital, more access to capital, than many Third World capitalists.” (Prairie Fire)
*face palm*
So you are telling me most people who make an income of lets say 40K a year can actually afford to run luxury hotels? that is lunacy.
“Significantly, First World workers also receive a share of imperialist superprofits extracted from the Third World–just because they are from the First World.” (Prairie Fire)
That has always been the case since the dawn of capitalism. Workers have been able to get bigger breadcrumbs from the plunders of imperialism, but this does not make these people have any sway in policy decision by the bourgeoisie, who act on their own whim.
“First World workers are generally not involved in productive labor as Marx’s model proletarian is. ” (Prairie Fire)
Talk about dogmatism, does one need to use 19th Century conditions of labor to describe a post-industrial 21st Century USA? Anyway in the first volume of Capital Marx goes on to divide labor to those who engage in industrial work which produces commodities and clerical work which is mental labor. Marx observed that in the 19th Century clerical work was exlusive it was small and tended to go to highly skilled and trusted associates to an owner. The vast growth in banking, more intermediary stages in the movement of goods, distrust built into accounting systems both within and between firms, and the rise of independent audits, account for the greater part of the expansion of clerical labor. As far back as then Marx observed that as labor is displaced from industrial production it goes into clerical work, which would show the transformation of today’s post-industrial society. The proliferation of clerical work led to the application of scientific management techniques and the standardization of clerical operations therby opening the way for the mechanization of office work. clerical labor much like being a fast food clerk at McDonalds STILL is proletarian labor, it differs in that it does not produce a tangeable product like the industrial proletariat does(which explains why for the longest they were the vanguard of Socialist parties and continue to be in Developing nations) but it does provide a service and still dependant on capitalism to survive.”
Maoist Third Worldist Prairie Fire:
If you aren’t here to engage in serious discourse, then you shouldn’t waste my time. Don’t think that acting dense is going to get you off the hook.
Look at this gem. I stated: “In fact, it is not unusual for First World workers to have more potential capital, more access to capital, than many Third World capitalists.”
Look at how Endruj Lusha responds:
“*face palm*
So you are telling me most people who make an income of lets say 40K a year can actually afford to run luxury hotels? that is lunacy.” (Endruj Lusha)
Do all Third World capitalists own luxury hotels? We don’t even have to talk about the Third World to make my point. It is not unheard of for someone who was an Amerikan worker at one point in his life to invest stocks or start a business. Many Amerikans work and own businesses. Don’t be dense. You don’t make yourself look better by purposefully misreading what is written. When you act in an unprincipled way, it makes you look foolish, not clever.
Endruj Lusha chants his mantra:
“The notion of class determined by the [relationship to the] means of production is HOW Marxists define class.” (Endruj Lusha)
Endruj Lusha adds a quote by Marx that supports our class analysis, more then the First Worldist, Hoxhaist one. Marx describes the Proletariat as those:
“who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. ” (Endruj Lusha quoting Marx)
Most of the Amerikan working class is not engaged in production anymore. The vast majority of the Amerikan workforce is employed in value-draining enterprises, not value-creating ones. A minority of Amerikans workers are employed in the productive sector. So, right off the bat, we can say that most Amerikans don’t satisfy your criteria, let alone the criteria of Marx’s more complex views. For example, many of those employed in the First World are employed, not in value production, but in the realization of value. There are probably more store clerks in the United States than there are factory workers. Endruj Lusha kindly provided us with the information that the biggest private employer in the US is Wal-Mart. This is what Marx, Capital Vol. 3 Chapter XVII, had to say about the distinction between wage-earners in industrial capital and those employed in Wal-Marts:
“We must make the same distinction between him and the wage-workers directly employed by industrial capital which exists between industrial capital and merchant’s capital, and thus between the industrial capitalist and the merchant. Since the merchant, as mere agent of circulation, produces neither value nor surplus-value.. it follows that the mercantile workers employed by him in these same functions cannot directly create surplus-value for him.. In other words, that he does not enrich himself by cheating his clerks.” (Capital Vol. 3 Chapter XVII)
Maoist-Third Worldist have described this as the rise of First World mall economies. Many First World economies can be described as a mall writ large. Nothing is produced at the mall. Yet people are employed managing, transporting, securing, etc. goods that are produced elsewhere but are sold at the mall. It is the influx of goods from outside the mall that keeps the mall afloat. Production is going on outside the mall, in the Third World. These goods are not secured through “fair exchange” since the mall doesn’t produce anything to begin with nor does is exchange services with those who do. The goods that keep the mall economy up and running are secured through imperialism. Obviously, like all abstract models, this is a big oversimplification. However, it makes an important point about global trends and the relationship between the non-productive segments of the First World and the productive segments of the Third World.
The shift in First World employment from productive labor to non-productive labor is noteworthy because Marx saw the paradigmatic case of exploitation as the exploitation of those engaged in productive labor. Maoist-Third Worldists point out that what Marx considered exploitation no longer exists in the First World. First World workers have higher incomes, higher standards of living, greater access to and more varied leisure time, greater diversity of life options, greater social mobility, more and more access to capital for much of the past century. The value that sustains First World society has to be coming from somewhere. This level of parasitism is propped up by imperialism’s theft of Third World value.
It is not adequate to use whether one is a productive worker as the criterion for whether one is exploited, which is another reason why focusing exclusively on one single quote from Marx is wrong. One can be a non-productive worker who receives an exploitation-level income. There are Third World non-productive workers who make exploitation-level incomes. It would be dogmatic to place such people outside the proletariat — exploited, as a revolutionary subject. However, Amerikan workers make far more than exploitation-level incomes no matter where they are employed. The reason that Marx, at times, especially in his popular works, had such a narrowly defined view of the proletariat was because he thought the world was polarizing between two great classes: the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Had the world polarized in this simple way, then any one of Marx’s definitions would be adequate to determine the proletariat. This is because, in such a model world, the exploited class would be co-extensive with the class that doesn’t own the means of production would be co-extensive with the class that has nothing to lose but its chains would be co-extensive with the class that isn’t the bourgeoisie, etc. This is not the case in our world. And, Marx recognized this in various ways, especially in his more scientific works (like Capital). Being exploited is not the same thing as being a worker. Not owning the means of production is not the same as only having your labor to sell, etc. What Endruj Lusha does is emphasize one aspect of Marx’s work on class to the exclusion of everything else Marx wrote and to the exclusion of reality. And, on top of that, Endruj Lusha liberally misinterprets the passage from Marx, which on the face of it excludes most Amerikans (since they are non-productive) from the proletarian class anyways.
When Marx was talking about the proletariat, he is not talking about something abstract. His descriptions point to a real group, a real force, in the world. Marxism is not an academic exercise. The whole point of Marxism is to change the world. Thus the most important aspect of the proletariat is that it is the revolutionary class. Core to this is the idea of exploitation and oppression, i.e. having nothing to lose but one’s chains. Instead of taking a scientific approach, Endruj Lusha approaches the world with a handful of dumbed-down scripture. When the world doesn’t fit the formulas, the world must be mistaken. Maoists call this idealist approach cutting the toes to fit the shoes. One only need to go look at the Hoxhaist web pages and compare them with Maoist-Third Worldist material to get a sense of what I am talking about. On one side is dead dogma, on the other is living analysis that actually predicts and explains the world.
Let’s do a thought experiment. If a CEO makes a million dollars a year, but his pay takes the form of wages and he has no stock options, then, is he part of the proletariat? Of course not. And, an organization that saw such a person as its social base would never be capable of leading a successful revolution. Only the most superficial, mechanical analysis would count such a person as part of the proletariat. Despite the fact that this person does not own the means of production and this person is paid a wage, this person is not a member of the proletariat, the revolutionary class. Looking beneath the surface, one finds a net-exploiter. Not only is such a person paid far over the value of labor, they also have access to tremendous amounts of capital. Only a fool would count such a person as part of the revolutionary class. The hypothetical CEO example is just an extreme example of the position that most Amerikans occupy. Most Amerikans are paid over the value of their labor. Many have access to capital. Virtually all of them have some or all of the following: land, houses, cars, appliances, savings, etc. Many First World workers literally do own the means of production through stocks, etc. Amerikan workers are a labor aristocracy. They are thoroughly bourgeoisified. Like the bourgeoisie, they are net-exploiters (they receive more value than they produce). They share all the reactionary beliefs as the bourgeoisie. The First World worker has more in common with his own bourgeoisie than with the Third World proletariat. For these reasons, the First World worker continues to align with his own bourgeoisie.
Endruj Lusha says that exploitation and immiseration are not key to understanding who the revolutionary subject is. Endruj Lusha’s reading of Marx is downright strange. Exploitation and misery are key topics in Marx. They are key topics for revolutionaries. To claim that exploitation and misery are not key to the understanding the revolutionary class is to throw reality out the door. Even more strange, he points to a passage in Marx about, wait for it, relative deprivation and discomfort. Nothing in the passage disproves a thing that I have said about Marx. In fact, the passage confirms what I have written. Production is globalized. Anyone who seriously looks at political economy today has to examine how economies work globally, internationally. By global standards, Amerikans are the ones living in the palace in the passage by Marx. Just because the US border ends at the Rio Grande does not mean our analysis does. To take such a position is pure chauvinism.
Throwing science to the wind, Endruj Lusha quotes some First Worldist School of Social Work to set the bar for what counts as an exploitation-level income. According to the School, a single adult and child should make $25,000 to $37,000 in Oregon. Of course First Worldists are going to say they deserve their First Worldist standard of living. In fact, they will demand even a higher standard of living. Just because First World advocacy groups say First World people can’t live without their luxuries does not make it so. Amerikans think they deserve their stolen wealth — big surprise. Such an approach to setting the bar for exploitation-level income is inherently chauvinist and idealist. A distribution of the social product that set incomes to First World levels ($25,000 – $37,000/year, for example) globally is not even possible mathematically. There is not that much social product. In addition, to set this bar with no regard for people globally is chauvinist. It is chauvinist because it just assumes that Amerikans deserve their inflated standard of living. By contrast, a scientific approach sets this bar by looking at the value of labor or, alternatively, by establishing a realistic socialist distribution as a regulative idea.
Maoist-Third Worldists have shown that all non-incarcerated, legally working Amerikans make more than the value of their labor: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/blast-of-the-past-from-irtr-a-rough-estimate-of-the-value-of-labor/
Maoist-Third Worldists show that socialist distribution means Amerikans get much poorer: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/real-versus-fake-marxism-on-socialist-distribution/”
Notes.
1. Movie Review: Avatar. http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/movie-review-avatar-james-cameron-2009/
* Our comrades have never been afraid of open debate. We do not censor our critics unless it is for security or similar reasons. In other words, we do not censor anyone simply because they disagree with us. In fact, we encourage our critics to take their best shot. We don’t fear debate because truth is on our side. By contrast, our opponents in the online community return our generosity with slanders and rumor mongering. Because this discussion was originally buried in the comments section of the Avatar review, we are putting up slightly edited excerpts from the debates. These edited versions will omit any unnecessary and off-topic text. Unprincipled behavior and name-calling will also be omitted. Instead, they will present both sides in the best light. Those who wish to read the original debate can read the comments section of the Avatar review: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/movie-review-avatar-james-cameron-2009/
