PEN-L message, Re: super-profits belatedly

the problem with Lenin's analysis is that while he asserts that surplus-profits are extracted by the imperialist metropolis from the periphery, the real quantitative significance of this is not clear, nor is it clear how specifically these surplus-profits create a privileged labor aristocracy. All very well to allege exploitation but then you have to show how specifically it occurs.

The labor aristocracy if there is one still works for a living, and obtains a salary from that which itself is not profit but a deduction from profit. Of course, you can say that with that salary they can buy stocks in addition to homes from which they obtain profits, and thus they participate directly in the international transfers of value. Even so, that stock ownership tends to be rather limited - much more stocks are held indirectly through retirement plans, and in the US it is mainly the much older workers who own most stocks directly - the new generations own very few stocks. But in the US rather few social superannuation provisions exist and a retirement package doesn't really make you "privileged" very much, it's a necessity like another other.

You can always find privileged social strata in society but their privileges may have little directly to do with foreign superprofits. Looking at total disposable income of US residents in aggregate (direct+deferred) about 67% is labour-income, about 21% is income from property (direct+deferred), and 12% social security benefit receipts. If you now relate the foreign profit component to total domestic income from property assets, then really it's a rather small fraction, and of that fraction, it turns out that most of it is appropriated by a very small number of people. This suggests that if there is a privileged stratum of workers, they owe their more favourable lifestyle more to factors internal to the country, than to appropriations of foreign wealth. If anything, probably a far more significant mechanism is the importation of cheap consumer goods involving some kind of unequal exchange.

There is a sense in which Lenin's argument must be true by definition, since the larger the capital resources, the more profit they will proportionally attract, and great wealth attracts a coterie of hangers-on.

But Lenin's substantive argument is really that the political stance of the labor aristocracy is explained and determined by the fact that they directly depend economically on foreign superprofits. This is a generality which is more suspect, and needs to be investigated empirically. It is not difficult to do it if you know the data sources, it just takes maybe a few days or a week to get the problem into proportion.

But Marxists usually don't do it because they prefer moral generalities. The problem with that approach is, that (1) the real nature of so-called opportunism may not be understood that way in terms of the real interests that are in the background or at stake, and in that way, rhetoric about superprofits neither cuts any ice nor gets rid of the opportunism, it just says there are greedy people (2) the political stance of better-paid workers may vary in a way which has nothing specifically to do with their economic position. In many areas of the world, the so-called labor aristocracy has been among the most militant of any groups of workers.

I personally dissociate from the vulgar Marxists and the vulgar reductionists with their deformed ideas about "class" because the reality is that they don't investigate anything but just tout moral ideologies which express social envy as much as anything else. This type of thing does not aid the political movement and is ultimately based on a confused morality.

Who cares about whether an analysis is consistent with what Lenin said ? The real question is about what the reality is, and how to intervene in that.

Lenin himself once described the difference between mensheviks and bolsheviks as follows: the mensheviks treasured the Marxian intellectual heritage sentimentally, while the bolsheviks wanted to put Marxist thought really to work in new situations practically, so as to intervene in those situations. It's a moot point whether this is a fair description, but if it is adopted, 99% of today's leninists are really mensheviks who reverently cherish a holy icon. As you will know, a holy icon stands in a niche in the wall, and does absolutely nothing beyond being a decoration which quietly watches all sorts of sins being committed in front of it.

Jurriaan