The Red and BlackBoard

Placename wrote:

Without a proper understanding of what capitalism is, how is the working class to effectively fight it? I'm not relegating revolution to "mere ideology". Ideology, which is ultimately derived from general material conditions in society, plays a key role in the reproduction of our society. Removing the superstitions and obfuscations of bourgeois ideology lays naked the truth about objective material conditions and the role of exploitation in underpinning our current global system.
It's precisely a lack of class consciousness. Identification with the native bourgeoisie as opposed to fellow "foreign" proletarians is a textbook example of false consciousness which substitutes itself for proletarian class consciousness when the latter is not actively cultivated. The working class of the developed world does not constitute a separate class from the proletariat as a whole. It still is defined by the lack of private property, by the fact that it is exploited because of this.
I wouldn't say that it's happening to "white Americans", but I would say it's happening to white American workers. It's no coincidence that white American workers represent key cultural constituencies in both the Trump and Sanders movements: it's because these movements represent a response to the social antagonism, either an indirect response, in the case of Trump, or a direct response, in the case of Sanders. The explosive rise of reaction across Europe is not because the proletariat in the developed world is inherently reactionary - it's because, with the failures of the left to effectively address the social antagonism between capital and labour, bourgeois ideology - false consciousness, substitutes itself and offers a "solution" to a problem which bourgeois ideology is incapable of actually effectively identifying.
Their position as proletarians in the single most advanced capitalist society means that they have far more revolutionary potential than a petite-bourgeois on the periphery of international capital. Even if the petite-bourgeois from Malawi were to give up their business and head for the hills with their AK-47, the movement they're fighting for will likely end up as every other national-liberation movement of the 21st century - of marginal importance to the global capitalist system, unless it becomes a part of the global capitalist system - see China for the big example here. Have you stopped to think that the revolutionary in the third world is tolerated to an extent by the global capitalist system precisely because it poses no existential threat to it?
The first world proletariat stands to gain an end to oppression, exploitation, alienation and so on. It has its own liberation and abolition of itself as a class to gain - I'm honestly a little surprised that a supposed "communist" is asking what the proletariat have to gain from a proletarian revolution!
The proletariat of the first world at proletarian in so far as they are still defined by lack - ie, the lack of private property and the means to live without offering ourselves up to exploitation by capital. While we are able to benefit to a certain extent from social infrastructure - infrastructure which had to be fought for and won by the working class every step of the way - we are still fundamentally proletarians. Our interests are inhrently opposed to those of capital, by definition - anything else is pure class collaborationist nonsense.
It isn't a case of demanding higher and higher wages - it's that currently wage struggles are one of the ways - one of the most basic ways - in which the central antagonism between labour and capital expresses itself.
Workers who are, presumably completely powerless and unable to struggle themselves?
You're right - there's nothing magical about it. The material conditions are already in place, for workers of all nationalities and ethnicities in the developed world. Stagnating wages, rising unemployment, periodic crises, housing shortages, rising costs of living, growing inequality, the list really does go on and on. Again, the rise of reaction across the developed world is a symptom of these. What's missing is a proletarian consciousness which can understand the true root causes of these problems and what needs to be done to end them.

I never argued that the labor aristocracy is a part of the bourgeoisie, but that its interests are aligned with the bourgeoisie in that it receives a significant part of the imperialist profits from the exploitation of the rest of the world.

You can insist all you want that it's a lack of class consciousness. But the fact that the Amerikan "working class" is in the global top tier of the world while not being responsible for the production of goods for the most part does have ideological and material implications. They're not all of a sudden going to "realize" that their interests are with the oppressed peoples of the rest of the world whom their wealth comes from, most of them are perfectly fine maintaining this system of exploitation since they're on the better end of it. Amílcar Cabral once said, "Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children..." This is what motivates revolutionary struggle in the third world, the fact that they are exploited to the bone. In the first world, on the contrary, these material benefits already exist for most people and are a product of imperialism. What would the labor aristocracy revolt for? More imperialist wealth? Or perhaps is the idea of the labor aristocracy revolting to unite with the oppressed peoples of the world and voluntarily redistributing the wealth they benefited from a bit idealistic?

Simply saying that white Amerikans are oppressed doesn't make it true. Yes, there are transgender people, there are non-binary and agender people, but would the cis heterosexual white majority revolt alongside them for their rights? Yes, there are people with autism who face all kinds of ostracization and condescension, but would the allistic people take up armed revolt alongside them for their rights? They might sympathize with them, but it's idealistic to assume that the labor aristocracy will out of nowhere revolt against imperialism when their own position in society comes from being the beneficiary of that superexploitation.

Here's what I'm asking about the "proletariat gaining from a proletarian revolution": is the "proletariat" in question really proletarian? No. They have more in common with the imperialist bourgeoisie than with any oppressed peoples. They owe their wealth to that. They owe their socioeconomic position to that. If we are struggling for a world of equality, and achieving that equality means that those at the better end of the inequality must give up what they have that makes them better off, and that those better off will not voluntarily relinquish them, why should we assume that they would revolt? The oppressive factor behind lack of private property is that one group benefits from the wealth produced by others. If the first world labor aristocracy are the benefactors and not the producers, they are part of the oppressors and not the oppressed.

Workers and peasants in the third world do revolt against imperialism. There are the Naxalites, the NPA-Philippines, the Nepali Maoists, the Shining Path, and many more. These groups have all either waged people's war in the past or are waging now. Because their material conditions are much worse than any white Amerikan.

You can insist and repeat as many times as you want that the labor aristocracy is proletarian and oppressed, but that doesn't make it true. That is a material and historical falsehood. Stagnating wages, housing shortages, rising living costs, etc. are issues that the petty bourgeoisie or even parts of the top bourgeoisie could complain about. They do not by themselves mean oppression. Reaction historically came about in response to a massive threat of revolution against the bourgeoisie. There is no such threat today, so why would there be a need for it? Because the reactionary parties represent the interests of the labor aristocracy: maintaining the imperialist wealth by continuing and increasing the superexploitation of the rest of the world. You can pretend that all of a sudden proletarian consciousness will come to these people, but there are no material conditions behind that to make that happen.

Autonomous masses wrote:

If someone says we should tackle global inequality, they are acknowledging that global inequality exists. Honestly, I doubt the living standards of anyone except the wealthy would have to dramatically sink in order to achieve global equality.
I'm not saying charities are the answer, just that they are evidence of many people's good intentions and a desire to help those in poorer countries achieve the same standard of living as they experience, even if this method could be considered misguided.
Obviously sweatshops and so on are far more common in poorer countries, but in the US and Britain many similar things exist. Illegal immigrants for example are often forced to work in the same conditions in first world countries, and some workers are faced similar conditions and similarly pitiful wages. This is a problem that is more pervasive in poorer countries, but not unique to them.
i'm saying that the bourgeoisie are international, and not just located in the west. In the same way, the global working class are not just located in the 'third world'. As for the last sentence, is that not the case everywhere? What makes you think that workers in the third world are aiming for revolution, and not to increase their own wealth?

Living standards and wages of almost all Amerikans would have to go down, actually. The US consumes resources of the world at around four times that the world can handle and almost all Amerikan wage-earners fall in the top 15 percent globally in terms of wealth. Amerikans wouldn't revolt for that, they would revolt against it.

Regarding charities, the exact same argument could be made for the imperialist bourgeoisie, since most of them do philanthropy of some kind.

Immigrants do face these brutal conditions, because they are among the oppressed peoples within the US. There are certain groups within the US that face superexploitation, albeit not to the same level as the third world. That doesn't change the fact that there is also a labor aristocracy that benefits from superexploitation.

Yes, I am aware that the bourgeoisie are international. When did I argue anything contrary to that? If third world workers seek to increase their wealth, that's a good thing. They are the bulk of the oppressed peoples of the world and they don't benefit from the system in any way. And they do revolt. Almost all of the past revolutions have happened in the third world and all of the current ones are happening there.

Also, I just noticed this.

Placename wrote:

Their position as proletarians in the single most advanced capitalist society means that they have far more revolutionary potential than a petite-bourgeois on the periphery of international capital. Even if the petite-bourgeois from Malawi were to give up their business and head for the hills with their AK-47, the movement they're fighting for will likely end up as every other national-liberation movement of the 21st century - of marginal importance to the global capitalist system, unless it becomes a part of the global capitalist system - see China for the big example here. Have you stopped to think that the revolutionary in the third world is tolerated to an extent by the global capitalist system precisely because it poses no existential threat to it?

Ok, this is outright racist garbage. What makes you think that you demanding slightly higher wages is any more revolutionary than the national liberation movements? Those movements were and are armed struggles against the compradors of the imperialist bourgeoisie in order to end the chokehold of their countries by the first world. They were and are quite clearly more than "marginal importance" since the imperialists have desperately tried to crush the ones in the past and are trying to crush the ones happening now. Like seriously, get off your high horse. Have you stopped to think that the leftist parties in the US and Europe are the ones that are being tolerated by the global capitalist system since their miniscule demands for higher wages means next to nothing for them? Those are the ones that pose no existential threat to capitalism-imperialism. Sure, there is police interference on many occasions, but that's not comparable by any means to what the guerrilla forces in the third world face. Because national liberation means that the imperialists don't have vast reserves of people to exploit as cheap labor.

Look up the NPA, Naxalites, etc. before you try throwing more Trotskyism at me.

Astreapolis wrote:

Also, I just noticed this.
Ok, this is outright racist garbage. What makes you think that you demanding slightly higher wages is any more revolutionary than the national liberation movements? Those movements were and are armed struggles against the compradors of the imperialist bourgeoisie in order to end the chokehold of their countries by the first world. They were and are quite clearly more than "marginal importance" since the imperialists have desperately tried to crush the ones in the past and are trying to crush the ones happening now. Like seriously, get off your high horse. Have you stopped to think that the leftist parties in the US and Europe are the ones that are being tolerated by the global capitalist system since their miniscule demands for higher wages means next to nothing for them? Those are the ones that pose no existential threat to capitalism-imperialism. Sure, there is police interference on many occasions, but that's not comparable by any means to what the guerrilla forces in the third world face. Because national liberation means that the imperialists don't have vast reserves of people to exploit as cheap labor.

Look up the NPA, Naxalites, etc. before you try throwing more Trotskyism at me.

PlaceName has a valid statement though. The reason they don't care about them now is how simple it is for capitalist/imperialist forces to just arm the group they want to destabilize the opponent group so that they can just threaten the nations in question to open borders and "free the elections". Just look at Angola. Angola's people desired to be a Socialist State but interventions by the South African and other foreign governments weakened the ability of the Socialists to take power. Though the Socialists in the end, the countryside is completely torn and Angola has been effectively "removed of its fangs" that would've ensured a dominant Socialist Power in the Southern African coast. Now nobody in the city wants to return to the countryside and help with the labour necessary for farming for fear of the landmines and the still existent political groups.

The West doesn't need to fear about Angola because they effectively taken out Angola's one strength which was its agricultural sector which is now only minorly existent as the nation requires vast food imports. The West does it all the time to forces that do not require an invasion to prevent losing their markets. Afterall, Angola went from colony to a Socialist state fairly quickly which meant that the West had no investment to lose but rather gain if they could arm the opposition faction.

Astreapolis wrote:

Living standards and wages of almost all Amerikans would have to go down, actually. The US consumes resources of the world at around four times that the world can handle and almost all Amerikan wage-earners fall in the top 15 percent globally in terms of wealth. Amerikans wouldn't revolt for that, they would revolt against it.

The US is an exception, even within the western world. If you are just talking about the US, then I am inclined to agree with you. I was referring to 'the west' as a whole.

Astreapolis wrote:

Regarding charities, the exact same argument could be made for the imperialist bourgeoisie, since most of them do philanthropy of some kind.

Again, I just mentioned charities because I think their existence shows that many have a desire to improve the lives of people in LEDC countries, since you were claiming that no one in richer countries cares about global inequality.

Astreapolis wrote:

I never argued that the labor aristocracy is a part of the bourgeoisie, but that its interests are aligned with the bourgeoisie in that it receives a significant part of the imperialist profits from the exploitation of the rest of the world.
You can insist all you want that it's a lack of class consciousness. But the fact that the Amerikan "working class" is in the global top tier of the world while not being responsible for the production of goods for the most part does have ideological and material implications. They're not all of a sudden going to "realize" that their interests are with the oppressed peoples of the rest of the world whom their wealth comes from, most of them are perfectly fine maintaining this system of exploitation since they're on the better end of it. ... They have more in common with the imperialist bourgeoisie than with any oppressed peoples. They owe their wealth to that. They owe their socioeconomic position to that. If we are struggling for a world of equality, and achieving that equality means that those at the better end of the inequality must give up what they have that makes them better off, and that those better off will not voluntarily relinquish them, why should we assume that they would revolt? The oppressive factor behind lack of private property is that one group benefits from the wealth produced by others. If the first world labor aristocracy are the benefactors and not the producers, they are part of the oppressors and not the oppressed.

I agree that there are material conditions that lead to the working class of core (I'm going to use core and periphery terminology from dependency theory/world-systems analysis instead of first/third world) countries like the USA to hold more liberal or reactionary ideology. But it isn't just because they tangentially benefit from superexploitation in periphery nations. Let me address some of your points.

Astreapolis wrote:

You can't attribute the fall of every revolutionary movement to "not properly understanding capitalism". That's a very quick way of dismissing historical precedent. It also relegates revolution to merely ideology and not material conditions. The past revolutionary movements were indeed filled with racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. which further demonstrates the reactionary nature of the labor aristocracy, and many of the leftist parties in the US and Europe today display those.
It's not a lack of class consciousness. It's that the material interests of the labor aristocracy are contrary to the interests of the oppressed peoples of the world. The first world workers who are paid $25,000, $30,000, $35,000 per year and above are in the global top 1 percent; that wealth comes from imperialism. And that's what most socialist parties in the first world rally around, higher wages. Fighting for a larger cut of the imperialist wealth makes the labor aristocracy essentially partners with the bourgeoisie in exploiting the rest of the world. And since this would suit the interests of the first world workers more than revolting against imperialism and redistributing wealth globally, one can tell that the labor aristocracy is in fact class conscious.
Wealth and living standards do have ideological implications. Violent revolution doesn't just break out when there is social peace, which is the case in the first world social democracies. It can only happen when there are social antagonisms and brutal oppression is taking place, which you'd be hard-pressed to argue is happening to white Amerikans.

First of all, simply comparing dollar amounts won't necessarely yield you the complete picture. In the USA and other core countries, living expenses tend to be far higher than in periphery nations, so the difference shown by the numbers and the difference in lived experience are not necessarely equivalent. Of course that isn't to say that most working class folks in America or western Europe don't have much higher standards of living, but it is not as if they are accumulating or don't yield much of that wealth back to the hands of the capitalists just because their gross income is higher than most people in the third-world.

But also more importantly I think, your analysis of the material conditions and how they interact with revolutionary potential is flawed. It isn't simply a matter of degree of exploitation or super-exploitation. There are also factors of different varieties of alienation and how prevelent they are, and the relations of production themselves. In many so called 'third-world' nations, which are not fully proletarianized and whose social structures haven't been fully altered by capitalism, community and traditional social bonds and lack of legitimacy and loyalty to the state makes revolutionary potential (whether progressive or reactionary as is unfortunately often the case) very much increased. When combined with the exploitation and superexploitation and the onset of processes of proletarianization, this is magnified even more. It is very easy to see their direct interests and to see how people could work together to govern themselves and lead their own path against the bourgeois state and capital. In fact, many third-world movements are in reaction and resistance to being proletarianized, not just a reaction to the superexploitation of labor in a capitalist fashion after. The Zapatistas, landless peasants movements and many others are key examples of this.

In countries like the USA and nations in western Europe, social bonds are highly disintegrated and people very widely dispersed, leading to a much more atomized social structure and dependence on the ruling social structures for their livelihood and stability. People are highly alienated in the relations of production and generally tend only to have loose social ties to community and family, partially caused by and a cause of a highly individualistic, reactionary ideology prevailing, and a general sense of helplessness and pessimism towards radical change. Would many people in the first world be amenable to a radically different world in theory? Sure, but their lived experience too often tells them that it's impossible because people are just naturally individualistic and the only thing maintaining them is the social structures of hierarchy that foster this disintegration, capitalism and the bourgeois state. The material relations of production reinforce and reproduce this alienation. They experience class struggle and conflict of interests with the capitalists but often lack any firm foundation of community to organize around or experience in organzing and living autonomously that would allow them to see their struggles as shared or systematic. When then combined with the relative prosperity and higher standards of living deriving from the high profitability of core production processes in the core nations (enabled by periphery production processes and superexploitation at those points of production), this makes first-world workers tend to not be able to concieve of their class interests as "proletarian" or in resisting capitalism.

I also agree that there are elements of "false conscioussness" (if you want to call it that) and this ties into the idea of contradictory class locations but that's another topic.

This is of course a very broad and general set of statements, and conditions in different contexts are always much more complicated. This also isn't to say that "traditional" (a problematic term) social structures that yield less alienation are by definition "good" or always "revolutionary" by the way; just maybe a note on how the social structures which are a part of both the material infrastructure and ideological superstructure, and how they create revolutionary potential and class struggle is much more compicated than simply exploitation versus superexploitation.

Let me know what you all think.

*Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat

The full name of the second one.

Hi there.

Also, I'm done debating the subject. It's clear that we disagree and all. I would appreciate if people looked at the two works above, at the very least to see an analysis that's different from the orthodox Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, anarchist, etc. understanding of capitalism and imperialism.

Delkoria wrote:

Hoi guys >~<" I'm back. I was visiting my mother and her boyfriend for the weekend.

Hoiiiii, welcome back. I am out of town visiting family as well.

New Sloveniakia wrote:

One of the scariest pieces of music I have ever had the pleasure of listening to from one of the scariest (and fascinating) movies I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vckpu9CorHc

Ah, Paprika. There's that nightmare fuel.

Astreapolis wrote:

Hi there.
Also, I'm done debating the subject. It's clear that we disagree and all. I would appreciate if people looked at the two works above, at the very least to see an analysis that's different from the orthodox Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, anarchist, etc. understanding of capitalism and imperialism.

Well that's a shame; I was looking forward to coming home and writing out a response - perhaps a testament to my dull evenings more than anything.

Maybe next time.