Relevant with the Markey comments on China today.
Also take a look at how many labor union bosses supported Guiaido.
I don't think this is very applicable to the U.S. in 2021. Lenin was not a prophet -- no matter how good his ideas were when he wrote them, conditions can change, and something written a century ago might cease to make sense.
This doesn't apply that well today because we've had a few generations of propaganda intended to disconnect the business end of imperialism from the benefits it produces for the metropole. When Lenin wrote this, the concept of empire was not nearly as controversial as it is today. It was largely taken for granted, especially in Europe. Even in the United States there was this sense of "we've conquered the frontier, we're an emerging world power, it's only natural we take our place among other empires." You could write openly about "American Empire" in major publications and that was a totally acceptable part of mainstream politics. Overt racism played a large role, too -- you could openly, explicitly talk about "the white man's burden" (published in 1899, written about the U.S. colonizing the Philippines) as a justification for enriching America at the expense of the global south. Imperialism and its economic benefits for the U.S. were clearly linked and discussed as a matter of fact. In that context it makes sense to say that bourgeoisified workers accepted imperialism at the expense of their foreign comrades. Open racism meant they didn't view those foreign comrades as comrades, and open discussion of imperialism-as-imperialism made the economic benefits of empire explicit.
But in the century that followed, imperial powers took great pains to obscure their exploitative practices, and significant strides have been made in making rank-and-file workers in the imperial core less virulently racist. It's much less acceptable (and much less common) today to directly make the case for imperialism -- look at all the flack Trump caught for suggesting we steal Syrian oil as part of our presence there, look at how much effort was put into justifying the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as anything but neo-colonial pursuits, etc. Propaganda works, and it's been deployed for decades now to make the case that whatever the U.S. is doing to foreign countries is totally not imperialism. We've been told we're the good guys, that we're fighting for human rights and democracy and freedom, not that we're nakedly using our military to extract resources. Paternalistic excuses for this (rooted in racism) don't track nearly as well, either.
In short, imperialism was openly sold to the American working class in 1921 in a way that it's not in 2021. What's sold today is exactly the opposite of imperialism -- it's the idea (obviously not the practice) that we're doing good things abroad not because it benefits us, but because we want to help the poor, oppressed foreign masses under the yoke of horrible dictators. It's not bribing bourgeoisified workers; it's lying to them. That means we should be approaching workers as people who can come around with the right education, not as knowing participants in imperialism who are happy to perpetuate it so long as they get their cut.
Tell that to the AFL-CIO and all the unions building bombs for Ratheon. Neo-colonialism/neo-imperialism is still imperialism. They still have everything captured in the same way they just learned that media monopoly allows you to lie.
Neo-imperialism is still imperialism, but I'm talking about how people understand what they're doing. There's an incredibly powerful propaganda machine running 24/7/365 selling people on the idea that neo-imperialism is not imperialism, so I don't think most people outside of leftist spaces understand it as such. The harm is still the same, of course, but this informs how we should treat those people/how we should try to reach them.
this mf hasn't heard of the AFL-CIO or 90% of American unions. This stuff is more pertinent to today than ever. They aren't propagandized, they're captured. The US government basically replaced all union leadership in the US with their own agents a while back (either through pressure on unions or literal agents (I'm guess on this part)) and they expelled the communists. The US has probably used labor unions more for counter-revolution than they've ever been used for revolution itself. downvote downvote downvote. We're not talking about just rank-and-file union members here. I mean look at the Culinary Union leadership's opposition to Sanders while the membership seemed to be for him. That's a clear disconnect between the rank-and-file and the leadership.
I believe you have a point about the overt discourse, but the material relationship is still there: the comparative comfort that the middle class in the imperial core has comes at the expense of the subjugated periphery states, racism and chauvinism are still heavily ingrained in the American conscience even if the very most mask-off promotion of them is frowned upon enough that doing so will result in a lucrative career on youtube and the reactionary talk show circuit, and there's a massive amount of propaganda aimed explicitly at tricking anyone with a conscience into thinking that everything from brutal wealth extraction to the arming of white supremacist militants is actually a benevolent act of charity from the "developed" world to the "developing" world which Americans are eager to accept because it eases their conscience as they consume mountains of luxury trinkets made in the periphery.
And that's before you get to the real, educated neoliberals who fully understand the evil that their comfort is predicated upon and who declare that it must be good and right because it benefits them personally, resolving their cognitive dissonance by explicitly embracing evil rather than trying to doublethink it away.
I agree that the material relationship is the same -- neo-imperialism is still imperialism -- but the extent to which people understand that is important to how they should be treated/how we should attempt to get through to them. If someone is knowingly hurting others we should handle that differently than if they're hurting others because they think they're bringing freedom or democracy or whatever.
Of course, the latter is still bad, and someone can be responsible for harm even absent the intention to harm. But it's a different type of responsibility, and more immediately, it speaks to what might convince them to stop. Someone who understands what they're doing and still does it won't be swayed by merely being educated on the subject, for instance. But if someone thinks they're spreading freedom and democracy and they learn about how something like sanctions on Venezuela or the DPRK actually hurts people? That might move them.
"freedom and democracy" is "the white man burden" of today. It is paternalism in both, but it is this way because western chauvinism is deep within the culture and does not cross the mind consciously.
:geordi-no: professional managerial class
:geordi-yes: labor lieutenants of the capitalist class
i really do like that one better even though it seems slightly pretentious to say that now a days.
i seriously feel like we're closer to getting a UBI than ever getting a legit new deal 2.0. But who knows for sure, after 2022 elections, I'll have a pretty good idea where the country is actually headed. If what I've assumed is going to happen (republicans win big again) then i'm almost certain they will be able to stonewall practically everything in the house and senate again and cause another Obama type situation where Biden wont do shit cause he wants bipartisanship and then republicans take 2024 presidency again.
Would this mean semi-proletarians or the petty-Bourgeoisie?
Or college educated workers? Those in high paying service jobs like doctors?
This is just about union leadership and "socialist party" leadership. Like Kautsyites that supported the war because they got concessions.
Lenin is saying the concessions come not from a weakening of capital, but a strengthening of it through imperial conquest and those who tell the workers that concession is victory are philistines and "labor aristocrats". The workers can always be saved, but their leadership has been corrupted.
It's not really just about the unions, it's about labor aristocracy in general, the chunk of labor that has almost become one with their bosses.
Also it is obligatory to bring up the fact that Lenin also stressed the importance of participating even in reactionary unions. I think he discussed it in the infantile book.
Which is why I said "the workers can always be saved" no matter how corrupt the union is, the workers are still workers.
Ahhh okay. So a certain type of opportunists, like you said in the union and “party” leadership, that support things like war in order to lie to the workers about what we get out of them is a victory, regardless of the outcome of the war?
Basically just corrupt worker organizations. Any group that claims to be for the people but takes capitalist payouts and supports the bourgeois state. The "national chauvinists".
AFL-CIO is the best example. Although they're not even paid off really, just straight up bourgeoisie at the helm of a "labor" org.
I’ve heard about them a little bit. Haven’t studied them much but I know they kicked out all the communists
Yeah, they're the state union basically. They serve the interests of capital and just make sure that the unions chartered under them get a cut of the plunder.
Labour aristocracy. The very highly paid section of labour which has become pacified and has often benefited from imperial exploitation.
