Re: [Marxism] Imperialism and the US working class (Was YADL)

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 4/5/2009 4:51:16 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, Waistline2  
writes: I second Artesian's motion that you supply us with some hard  
information, particularly trend data, demonstrating the transfer of wealth from 
 the 
colonial and semi-colonial world to the advanced capitalist countries and  then 
on to their working classes. << 
 
Comment 
 
Actually, Artesian and I engaged this question the better part of a decade  
ago on Marxmail.  
 
It got real bloody, he beat me up pretty bad. 
 
"Damnit stop quoting Engels and say what you means." 
 
The issue was presented a little more sharply and I could not extrapolate  
the history of the national wage rates peculiar to America against  a  
"magnitude of surplus" extracted from the colonies that enter into the wages of 
 
American labor. This dispute caused an epiphany for me: 
 
"Why not simply describe something - anything, as accurately as possible,  
rather than proceeding from a conclusion or ideological formulation?" 
 
For instance, the historical privileges men have had over women do not  
require an elaborate theory and ideology first, but demands description,  
articulation and then a study of the history. The same applies to blacks in  
relationship to whites. Although, I would not admit it at the time, what I was  
essentially trying to describe was the relative differences in wages and living 
 
circumstances between whites and blacks, which gets real confusing when dealing 
 
with heavy industry where many blacks were once concentrated. 
 
Then of course blacks were tied to the land and one cannot compare  
agricultural labor to industry labor and call the difference in wage rates  
bribery. 
One cannot compare wage rates in auto with those in the retail sector  and 
called the difference privilege or bribery. From confusion, one enters the  
path of 
ideological madness when the wage rates of all whites in the core South  are 
compared to the blacks of the North. Industry versus agricultural rates and  
union versus non union labor enter the picture and one can never be wrong if 
the  approach is to first accurately describe what we are looking at, and then 
fight  to inch closer to truth. 
 
>From that moment until now  I have tried to write without thick  ideology and 
question all formulations I inherited from the period of Lenin. I  was 
already on that path along with everyone else. 
 
Daniel De Leon coined the term, "labor lieutenants" of the capitalist  class. 
 Family members and I were "labor lieutenants of the capitalist  class."  
This term is purely American and one cannot be historically or  currently 
"wrong" 
to deploy it.  However, what is being isolated is the  upper strata of labor 
in its organizational expression. 
 
This is not to say that the workers in America are not in a "privileged"  
position in the world system of bourgeois production. Privileged is in quotes 
to  
denote being at the front of the curve of industrial development and capital  
investment. This issue really becomes complex when magnitude of capital 
deployed  in a sector is compared with wages and surplus value yield. No one 
denies 
the  historically horrible genocidal treatment of the colonial or former 
colonials at  the hands of imperialism; the role of the ideology of white  
superiority/chauvinism etc. 
 
Simply because Lenin deployed certain terms and concepts that were accurate  
in the era he lived, does not mean these terms and concept retain the same  
validity 90 years later. 
 
"Labor lieutenants" of the capitalist class. I like that term and concept,  
which is not to say I am prepared to open a discussion on De Leon and 
Lassalle's  Iron Law of Wages. 
 
WL. 
 
 
**************Feeling the pinch at the grocery store?  Make dinner for $10 or 
less. (http://food.aol.com/frugal-feasts?ncid=emlcntusfood00000001)

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