Re: [OPE-L] debate on labor aristocracy

[Paul Cockshott <clyder@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoting Jurriaan Bendien <adsl675281@xxxxxxxxxx>:

> Hi Paul,
>
> I don't doubt this at all, and in fact the same can be said for most rich
> countries, especially places like Luxemburg but also Holland for example.
> Almost everywhere and all times a section of the working population is
> better paid and more privileged than the rest. This is not in dispute. What
> is in dispute is (1) their class status and the influences on their
> political orientation, (2) whether they are actually paid from profits made
> overseas and (3) whether repatriated profits from overseas used to pay wages
> are sufficient to sustain a substantial labor aristocracy by themselves.

I think that all 3 are true of a substantial portion of those
working in the Banking sector in London for example.


>
> Lenin sought to explain the lack of an anti-imperialist stance by workers in
> industrialised countries by the fact that a section of the *working class*
> benefited materially from their own country's imperialism, and were thus
> unlikely to oppose it. It was a "share in the spoils" argument. But I could
> argue in the same vein that *any* worker benefits from the job and income he
> has, and is therefore unlikely to support anything that threatens his job or
> income.
>
> Jurriaan
>


Paul Cockshott

www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc
reality.gn.apc.org

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