Re: Re: the Kaiser

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>
> The most generous social democracy has not been found in the belly of
> the beast -- once England, now the USA -- but in Scandinavia.
> Imperialism has been costly to the working class of imperial hegemons.
>

Discussion of the relationship of imperialism to the _whole_ of the
working class in the imperialist centers has tended more toward
moalistic posturing than careful analysis. I have the index to Lenin,
CW, in front of me. There is one reference to "labour aristocracy" in
Vol. 10 (1905-6), one to Vol. 12 (1907), one in Vol. 13 (1907-08), two
in Vol. 18 (1912-13)(one in an unpub. ms., one in an article on
England), three on vol. 19 (1913), one in vol. 20 (1913-14), then _18_
references for vol. 21 (Aug. 1914-Dec. 1915), and a flood of references
in the later volumes. As we know, it was the imperialist war and the
collaboration of European workers in tht war which brought the question
of the labor aristocracy to the forefont of Lenin's thought.

I've only sampled this material today, and its been over two decades
since I read it carefully, but my impression was and is that _It was
ONLY an upper strata of workers (and even within that strata primarily
leaders, not rank and file, that Lenin regarded as being bribed by
imperialist profits_. The empirical case (and this is mostly though not
wholly an empirical question) has not been made that either the bulk of
the workers individually _or_ the working class _as a class_ in the
imperialist nations benefit from imperialism. There is a strong
_appearance_ of that being or having been the case -- but marxists are
supposed to investigate rather than merely accept appearances. It goes
without saying that the millions of workers who died or were disabled in
The Great War did not benefit from imperialism.

Carrol