Saw this comment on the commie side of TikTok. My gut tells me this is ultraleft bs, but perhaps my fellow hexbears can educate me on this discussion which I’m sure is not new.
I don’t see how a poor American on food stamps is responsible, even though a systematic analysis reveals that international superexploitation is a thing.
The American proletariat can and should organize in any case. I don’t see how Americans can build any sort of socialist movement if any organization at all is accused of being hypocritical.
It's the definition Marx uses in Capital. The difference between value of labour power and the value of the products of labour is the source of surplus value. Marx himself invented the category of labour power; earlier economists thought that the employer buys labour.
First off so they can buy the commodities and avoid the horror of warehouses full of unsold goods. Second off because the trade unions won higher wages. Arghiri Emmamuel's Unequal Exchange looks at how that came about over the the 1860-1920ish period, then intensified after ww2.
This is exactly Cope's point; businesses in the global north are not profitable unless kept aloft by the superprofits