PEN-L message, Re: Nick Cohen on Thomas Frank

In a message dated 9/16/2004 9:35:16 AM Central Standard Time, cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

>The superprofit theory was held by Engels concerning 19th Century Britain and Lenin. So, maybe they are wrong , but Engels , Lenin and maybe the people who vote conservative in Kansas think there are superprofit mechnanisms in rich nations by which sectors of the working class gain marginal economic benefit relative to other sectors of the wc. <

Comment

The political and social fact of bribery of sections of the workers in our country is best expressed in its historical evolution as the genocidal wars against the Indians and slavery. The European colonizers - imperial forces . . . were paid money for the scalp of Indians as verification of murder. Hence scalping. This is an act of privilege and bribery.

The privilege consists in the fact that the Indian people were not paid for the scalping of whites and their land was taken. Bribery and privilege is a material and social relations between classes and oppressed and oppressing peoples first and foremost . . . according to Lenin. Hence imperial oppression and exploitation. Bribery and privileged is not distinct to capitalist imperialism but the imperial curve of history development.

Calling this bribery and privilege "the superprofit theory" obscures the fact of bribery and privilege. We have to face our history to over come it and understand how various sections of the working class think things out in real terms.

The political content of Lenin's imperialism is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations and peoples. It economic content was what he described as the distinction between the export of financial industrial capital as distinct from the export of commodities Marx talks about in the Communist Manifesto.

In our history . . . following the Civil War . . . Wall Street imperialism tightened its murderous grip on the plantation South and accelerated its outward expansion. As this took place the material standard of living of the Anglo American people . . . especially in the North . . . began to rise. The non-exploitating section of the Anglo American people have always instinctively understood that their material well being was tied to the exploitation and brutal beat down of the non-sovereign peoples.

In history if the Wall Street imperialist could not count on a huge section of the Anglo American people to brutally enforce job discrimination . . . privilege . . . housing and educational segregation . . . privilege . . . and political disenfranchisement . . . privilege and obvious bribery . . . the imperialist system would not been able to maintain itself in its historical form.

The imperialist bribery of the Anglo-American people . . . workers . . . made it possible and profitable to brutally murder Negro women and children, to burn their homes and churches and to meet appeals for justice with an indescribably bloody violence. There can be no doubt that history will place a collective responsibility upon the Anglo American people for the horrors of the lynch rope and burning stake of this old period in American history.

This is not the case today . . . but here is the meaning of bribery and imperial privilege as it worked itself out in American history. Nor does this mean that the African American . . . especially in the North has not materially benefited from America's imperial status.

To pose the issues as seeking to see what portion of imperial capital appears in the pay envelop of the American workers is to debase and deny the reality of imperial bribery and privilege. The historic relations of the Korean worker in Japan expresses Japan's imperial position. The historic relations of the Irish worker in England expresses England's imperial position in relationship to the Irish.

No . . . the material standard of living of the workers in the America Union specifically evolved on the basis of the North developing as a manufacturing appendage to the slave holding South. He who is exempted from slavery manifest a privilege and this is as clear as noon day.

The mechaniucs of this can be detailed in terms of how one acquired a slave . . . not necessarily become a large slave holder . . . but the fact that one could acquire a bank loan of $250 . . . with the slave you were to buy being part of the collateral . . . and this was a privilege extended to whites . . . although there was a handful of exceptions to the rule.

I of course have nothing put the most profound faith and trust in the lowest paid sections of the white workers . . . who have as yet to be exposed to real authentic communist worker literature. They are going to grasp the concept of class and capital on a higher and different level than the petty bourgeois black masses during their entry into the proletariat . . . as a mass . . . fifty years ago.

The Anglo American worker . . . and this new proletariat amongst them has been proletarianized for many generations in front of the Black masses. The historic selfless battle of the black masses against terror and segregation is noble and historic . . . but the Anglo American workers are going to rage undamned . . . once their come to an understanding of taking a class stance. We have honorable examples of this in our history . . . despite the imperial bribery and privilege.

The so-called "super profit" theory means bribery and privilege and the division between oppressed and exploited. The question of the labor aristocracy and its meaning is a somewhat different question and Engles makes a distinction . . . as does Lenin.

Melvin P.