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.
Your gut is correct. The international left needs something to offer all workers, it's idealist nonsense to expect that a Western left would ever be able to attract enough people to have leverage and use it to advance the position of the international working class without improving the situation for Western workers. That comment is grossly overgeneralizing the notion that imperialism incentivizes class collaborationism and false consciousness, which is true, but does not imply that anyone is better off by having a leftist movement that has nothing to offer to the people it's trying to attract.
From a utilitarian perspective if the left could rally the masses of the imperial core to all collectively go to the suicide booth, that would be a win for the global south. Of course that’s inhuman, from the moral high ground we would rally the masses of the imperial core to send everything not nailed down to floor on cargo ships to the global south forever, and the west could live in moral comfort with just the essentials, that’s also inhuman because nobody wants to live like that. From a practical perspective the imperial core could agree to pay reparations and gradually pay back the debt they owe to the global south but that’s the worst option of all, that’s not radical change at all, that’s worse than inhuman, that’s liberalism.
OP gone, wanted to repost bc I link to this as a source:
The neoliberalized American economy since the 1970s has been propped up mostly by the so-called FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate - a terminology coined by the economist Michael Hudson) which are essentially non-productive sectors that do not produce real goods and services. This is a prominent feature of finance capitalism devouring industrial capitalism:
The strength of its currency is derived from real estate ownership (land value), stocks and bonds market, intellectual property rights and licensing, financial derivatives etc. Now, you might think all these are virtual and therefore the US dollar is worthless. But no, this is what the world (held under the gunpoint by the US empire) has decided to calculate their GDP and currency exchange rate, which then allows the US to wreck other economies in the Global South using the strength of its currency, maintaining dominance over them and essentially extorting free lunches from all over the world, as most of the real goods and services today are produced by the Global South countries.
In other words, the financial empire is more like a landlord who does not have to work for a single day but can get everything he wants simply through extracting rent and concession. The US empire is doing this on a global scale against other countries.
While the Imperial Core enjoys the benefits of cheap goods and services from the Global South, this does not mean that their working class truly benefits from it. Instead, their exploitation became a form of debt slavery. Wages are kept low so workers have to borrow money to sustain themselves, which transforms their class character into one of debtor.
This kind of financialized capitalism means that unlike the late 19th and early-mid 20th centry, which was dominated by industrial capital, the working class in the Imperial Core today has their labor tied to debt (mortgage, rent, credit cards, student loans, medical bills etc.) rather than to industrial productivity, which was a key argument from Marx that proletariat is a uniquely revolutionary class because being freed from the land under the feudal arrangement, the labor performed by the proletariat is now directly tied to industrial profit under capitalism. The capitalists had to rely on labor to compete with other capitalists in order to make profit.
It has been described that the Imperial Core today under finance capitalism is more like a neo-feudal society rather than the industrial capitalism of the previous centuries. And this is largely true: just like the serfs in the feudal era, whose labor was tied to their land, the working class in the Imperial Core today work bullshit jobs to earn money to pay off their debt, which is what was necessary to survive in the first place. The manufacturing and service sectors pale in comparison to the rest of the Global South (and especially against China).
This really unified a lot of my own observations. Wonderful post!
It’s not an ultraleft statement to say that AES states do a little capitalism and have contradictions and things, it’s ultraleft to say that we should tear down AES states and not just them but states critical of the west like Russia and Iran because they aren’t doing socialism. Also why do we even call them ultraleft? It’s far too dignified of a name, revisionist left is a far better description of their beliefs than ultraleft.
You're part of the problem if you solely focus on improving conditions only in rich countries
focusing on autarky is fundamentally a socialist thing that all socialist movements end up doing when getting power and it fundamentally fucks over capitalists in other countries. this is already a concern that is solved.
of course social democracy stuff is cursed, its why its not socialism. it doesnt focus on autarky whatsoever.
Lil_tank isn’t saying it’s nice, they’re saying there are people around the world with general conditions much worse than what even the homeless experience in the west. Just look at Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, etc.
We should be fighting to improve living conditions for all people on a global scale.
In my opinion, if that means the conditions of the global south improve first, I’m totally fine with that. The majority of westerners live in decadence compared to much of the world.
Yeah it’s not like the failure of the working class in the West to organize somehow means the exploited third world gets to keep more of its wealth. There are problems with labor aristocracy in the West, but the solution to educate around global working class interests the way the capitalist class does.
I feel like this is less ultra left bs, although there’s some of that, but more creating a rationale for not being active in labor organizing. The West can’t do shit, the noble savages of the hinterlands will save us, so we can sit back and be snarky on the internet.
I doubt if Medicare-For-All got passed the American Bourgeois would be like "well we were holding back on the imperialism up till now, but since I gotta treat the core plebs a bit better I'm gonna ramp this shit up!"
They're already not holding back.
If anything, the opposite is true. The left was much stronger than it is now under FDR, and the New Deal didn't really kill any momentum for the left by itself, instead the Red Scares and McCarthyism had to perform that function. However, under neoliberalism, workers in the imperial core have turned more reactionary and often incorrectly prescribe blame on immigrants for their poor employment numbers and stagnating wages. The poor understanding of globalism leads people to believe that their enemy is the sweatshop worker in Indonesia, instead of the shareholder in Wall Street. The left can offer an alternative paradigm for the people that fall into that reactionary trap by showing that development isn't a zero sum game, we can have manufacturing at home without protectionism, xenophobia, and imperialism holding the international working class back.
where's (the source for) that map saying a globally equal distribution of wealth would slightly raise the average in
because it's so unequal?any fast food worker passes way more value of product through their hands than they're paid.
The only reason why america would have an increase in wealth is that there is a large underclass of poc, lgbt, and women workers who aren’t being paid their fair share and are essentially second class citizens, and also this is assuming just equality, equity would require even Black Americans to give up some things. Part of the reparations Black people would make would go back to the global south, because nearly everyone is guilty in the imperial core, even the most vulnerable. The only people under capitalism who are not guilty, which is a very large part of the human population is everyone who is indigenous, a non labor aristocrat worker, nonchristian, nonwhite, nonenglish speaking, a woman. And I’m sure there more factors and not everyone in these groups is not innocent, but generally, I think everyone reading this is guilty, guilt doesn’t exclude you from being a communist, it’s probably the reason why many of us are. We all seen the inequalities in our daily lives, and we have all probably been victims to capitalism at the same time. There are people who have not suffered under capitalism and people who have only suffered and both can be comrades but everyone is somewhere in between I think.
English is the language of capital, so yes you are privileged if you speak it. Privilege can not be measured but it does exist, some people got it some people don’t. Being AMAB you’re privileged until you start transitioning, when you do, your privilege goes straight out the window, fucking defenestrated, it’s one of the few ways for someone’s privilege to go into the negatives after birth. I’m sure as society progresses trans people will become a bit more privileged but right now they don’t benefit at all unlike gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. It’s like being a black/white interracial couple in the 50s, sure some lingering oppression still exists today but it’s not exactly revolutionary to be a “race traitor” as it was in the past. Idk, there’s no theory on measuring one’s privilege. It do be deeply unserious
Damn I wanna see this. That really puts in perspective how lopsided things are.
This is not how averages work.
There is a global average (mean) wealth per capita. Some countries have wealth above the average, and most have wealth below the average. Any change in the internal inequality does nothing to change this: the average of 50k and 60k is 55k, and the average of 10k and 100k is also 55k.
For the mean American wealth to be below the global average would require America as a whole to be losing wealth to other countries, and for the Netherlands and Germany and Sweden to be below average, with Spain and Italy above average. That's why the map didn't look very believable.
A bar chart that shows the 50th, 90th, and 99th percentile of wealth in selected countries would be a lot more informative in this case.
The infographic makes sense if it refers to median instead of mean. Changing wealth distribution does change median wealth.
The infographic cites the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2019[1], I think specifically Table 2-4.
Page 130, section 4.2 states that the global wealth per adult (mean) is $70,850 for mid-2019. To recover the numbers from the bottom map in the infographic, look in Table 2-4 for the median wealth per adult.
As an example, the infographic has the Philippines becoming 26x wealthier. Table 2-4 shows mid-2019 median wealth of $2,618. Computing the numbers, (70850-2618)/(2618) gives 26. Indonesia, with a median wealth of $1,977, works out to 35x — same as the infographic.
https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-databook-2019.pdf ↩︎
GDP is not reality. Yes we could provide Americans socialized healthcare, we could make housing affordable, we could reduce the cost of consumer goods. That’s not our goal, we aren’t trying to build the west a gilded cage where they can peacefully exist in heavily subsidized main streets and suburbs off the back of the socialist state. We want to tear down the American experience, their culture, their people, and remake it into something that can serve the global south rather than take from it. We want to do to America something much more punitive than what we did to East Germany. Yes they will get their healthcare, and housing, and treats. We will be taking their cars, their meats, their social media, their money, their guns, we will be taking so much from them because they need to pay reparations, and the payments will never end, we need to prepare the American working class to get into a mindset that they are in an eternal debt to the rest of humanity that they can never pay off and the only way this debt can stop existing is if the people can stop existing which is what we want since we are trying to stop whiteness from existing by simply better integrating communities together. I think it was Bolivia that forced racial integration by banning white marriages, not a perfect solution but our main concern is not the white working class. Our main concern could be to properly reeducate them to accept the equitable treatment we need to put on them, or we could not concern ourselves with trying to educate them at all and just force them to do as we say and cause resentment. The last thing we want is resentment, with education we can make people accept less.
The last thing we want is resentment
…and the payments will never end, we need to prepare the American working class to get into a mindset that they are in an eternal debt to the rest of humanity that they can never pay off and the only way this debt can stop existing is if the people can stop existing…
I fail to see how you can have both of these.
Also whiteness is not synonymous with American. Millions of Americans are victims of whiteness.
I think reparations can be tolerable, I think that people are naturally good and will recognize that they have to give back what is not theirs even if they suffer materially because of it. Also you’re right about the second part, I should have just said white americans.
Yeah but neverending? Like their children's children? At some point in this scenario, generations down the road, true equality has to be achieved at some point.
The reparations ends when the colonizer class no longer exists. So long as there is white people, so long as there is americans, there will have to be reparations.
This is just an argument against organizing, which is wrong inherently.
Edit to add: This isn't to say that class colaboration should be supported, but that as always the struggle for better must be taken with an international, anti-imperialist stance. A pro-imperialism advocacy group should be opposed, sure, but proletarians in the global north are largely debtors and kept paralyzed, not quite revolutionary.
International opposition to Imperialism serves as the primary lever to push the American proletariat into revolutionary potential.
This is the kind of sentiment that should be nested inside nuanced arguments that explain exactly how and why this conclusion was made and shared.
"Part of the problem" is some scold ass language. Asking people to just accept diminished quality of life and labor standards isn't exactly going to win people to the cause. Depending on the person or circumstance or audience I'd engage with this person but the delivery, format, etc tells me this is much more "being right on the internet" than trying to be constructive and start dialog. Self-flagellating labor aristocrats aren't going to topple capitalism no matter how hard they do it. If I was feeling especially petty I'd reply that the shame vector is a byproduct of western colonial christian moralism.
If the end goal of labor activism is just in your country? You aren't helping workers elsewhere. This isn't exactly hard to understand. But it doesn't mean all efforts are inherently counterproductive because of who does it and where.
Again, I'd be willing to discuss this seriously with a person who wants a serious discussion. Not a person with an axe to grind on the internet who wraps inflammatory rhetoric around a nugget of truth. It's lazy and I'm lazy so I'd probably just tune this person out. Better arguments about this exact concept can be read. Better faith actors can be engaged with.
Sometimes. It's essentially the same way why trade unions can sometimes be reactionary
E.g. I think UAW supports the tariffs against Chinese EVs. This improves the job security of American car workers but hurts Chinese car workers and companies which in turns reduces the ability of international working class to buy (cheap high quality) Chinese cars
I know a lot of unions nowadays with Boeing, Northrup Gromman, etc refuse to take any anti-war stances/actions because their priority is taking care of their missile builders, not the lives of non-Americans
that fits perfectly with my crippling depression, covid avoidance, and inability to deal with neurotypical people
This kinda bounces on my thoughts on this thread: For most people, the choice isn't between agitating in favour of local unions/left orgs etc vs agitating in favour of the left in the global south. It's usually between frankly pretty tepid support for locals or doing nothing. That's not to say that local unions like the AFL-CIA haven't done tremendous damage to the left in the global south either.
Honestly, I think it's more a result of reading some theory and filling out the rest of the gaps with your own assumptions, like just reading the Communist Manifesto or Principles of Communism and thinking that's a complete and thorough understanding of Marxism.
While people in the Imperial core do benefit from imperialism to the extent that it makes them unrevolutionary, it doesn't mean that making them worse off will make it any better outside the core.
Increasing income inequality in America doesn't make third-world countries any less exploited. It just means more of their labour is going to the American bourgeoisie rather than the American worker. The only argument you can really make is American workers should be worse off because they benefit from exploitation. But that's not a Marxist position, that's a moral position. It's a position that only seeks to punish people.
Regardless of whether American workers unfairly benefit from imperialism, I don't like when children go hungry, I don't like when LGBTQ+ folks are attacked, and I don't like when people die because they can't afford medication. Fighting for these things in America will not stop nor make worse the exploitation of the third-world.
My shoes got holes in them, I eat SPAM and ramen regularly as a meal, socks and underwear are worn until they physically cannot be categorized as clothing but I've got a monocle so I'm just the same Jeff Bezos.
There are some good critiques of thirdworldism in this thread already, so I won't add to them. But it really bothers me, how few people preface their comments with:"Yes, unequal exchange and superexploitation are real. Yes sometimes the working class in the imperial core benefits from them."
Acknowledge the material reality first, then make your argument. Also using "we" and "here" as a synonym for westerners or US citizens, as if no one else was using this platform is problematic.
I'm not thirdworldist and do think the international working class does have common interests and should stand united, but it is important to realize that sometimes western workers behave like a worker aristocracy.
Don't be like them avoid these errors. For example:
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When trade unions in the US support strict tariffs on China, because the bosses promise real hard, that then they'll refrain from moving production offshore. Then those unions enter into an alliance with western capital and become complicit in exploitation.
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When German leftist organizations want to be seen as reasonable, and acceptable by the state to avoid persecution and keep the little institutional support they get, there is one single thing they know they need to do(and most do it): fail to be anti imperialist and instead support NATO and Israel unconditionally or at least conveniently remain "neutral" to put the interests of the workers "at home" first. In doing so they betray the international working class and become complicit in genocide.
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Wherever people say "Yes, we support [struggle abroad / struggle of racialized minorities], but people wouldn't understand yet if we did something about it. So instead, let's focuse on [struggle of privileged parts of western working class] first.
I agree. I have a few more thoughts to add to this.
Workers in the imperial core have a responsibility to see past their immediate circumstances in order to understand that the exploitation of the global proletariat is fundamentally linked with their own exploitation. That although a worker in a rich country may be materially better off than a worker in a poor country, they have more in common, in terms of class position, with the global proletariat than with the bourgeoisie. A western worker who doesn't identify with the global proletariat has an incorrect understanding of their own position.
Superexploitation is not only real, but absolutely integral to contemporary capitalism. Therefore anti-imperialism is an indispensable part of any anti-capitalist movement. A movement which aims only to improve working conditions in rich countries is basically a white socialism, a socialism aiming only for the economic liberation of a subset of privileged workers (the labor aristocracy).
However, it doesn't follow that any organization whatsoever in rich countries is identical to a labor-aristocratic struggle.
If the global average wage is, say, $1 per hour, this says nothing about the material conditions of a worker receiving this average wage. In the US, this wage corresponds to far fewer goods than in Bangladesh. So it would be severely over-simplifying to simply compare a given worker's salary to the global average and declare that any worker earning above the average is benefiting from imperialism, therefore labor-aristocratic. There must necessarily be an analysis of the material conditions of that worker where they live. As well, in the US for example, 7.5% of the population is unemployed or under-employed. This population may receive a wage many times larger than the global average, yet still be unable to afford food or housing or medical care. It would be wrong to say that these people share a class interest with the lanyards working in DC merely because they are American workers.
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I was going to type up a whole bunch of shit, but honestly I'd rather hear from other Hexbears as an ultrabroke burgerlander.
