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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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I've never understood this because labor aristocracy has a simple, concise definition:
If you make more than (PPP 2007 USD) $1.50 / hour, or ~$250 / month, then congrats, you are in the minority of the world's workers, are getting paid more than the average price of labor power worldwide, and are technically part of the labor aristocracy, regardless of your ideology.
Doesn't seem like a great definition. Seems like it should be rooted in one's relationship to labor and capital rather than math. Some guy in Missouri living out of his car making sub-minimum wage as a waiter would qualify by the numbers, but it doesn't make sense to call him a labor aristocrat.
I think the definition is decent but they cited the wrong statistic. The definition refers to being paid more than your fair share of the value created by all labor, not to being paid more than the average or median wage. The value created is higher than the wage though so his cutoff value isn't meaningful.
Basically the definition is saying that labor aristocrats are people who are getting "cut in" on the profits of imperialism, their labor is being valued higher than the proportion of all value created that they contributed. So essentially if all labor was treated equally, capitalists would actually be losing money on labor aristocrats. I don't know where the actual line is but it's definitely higher than that.
There still might be room for criticism of that concept, but it's not just based on income math
This is a better phrasing, but it's still not clear what the use of this is. It illustrates how imperialism benefits the poor in the imperial core, but that doesn't seem novel or controversial, and the use I see most frequently -- writing off basically everyone in the imperial core in terms of socialist potential -- seems way off base.
I don't think the main reason socialism isn't widely popular among the poor of the U.S. is that they're relatively better off than the poor in the global south. This country had bigger leftist currents a century ago when it was openly imperialistic, after all, to say nothing of the decades following WWII. I think the reason is more along the lines of the intervening century of state repression and propaganda.
Yeah, I agree the usefulness of the distinction isn't totally obvious, especially as regards domestic support for socialism. But its also reasonable to assume that people who currently are making more money than justified by their fair share of global production might be resistant to equalizing the distribution, or even spending disproportionate resources to get the periphery up to speed on development, and the US has a lot more such people than most places (maybe the upper 80% by income?)
I don't know what the answer is, I don't want to think the US is a total lost cause either, but I don't have the analysis to justify that, personally.
sorry to necro reply but still thinking about this...
I think where we get into trouble here is defining the labor aristocracy. I had been working off of @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml's definition from elsewhere in the thread:
Which seems to be taken from Zak Cope. I don't know who that is so maybe he's great, maybe not, but on further reflection I don't know if we need to take it as pure mathematical gospel. Other writers don't seem to have defined it so specifically.
Under that definition, at least something like the upper 80% of the US population by income would be labor aristocracy (those over $18,000/yr in income), or more depending on how you define it (the other user was arguing for using average global PPP adjusted wages, I was arguing for something that encompassed more value not just wages, like global GDP per capita).
But honestly I don't know if any/many other theorists conceive of such a broad definition of labor aristocracy, it doesn't seem like it. It seems like the original use of the term was more observational than statistical. I'm coming around to the view that the extremely vague undefined way its used on this site is basically useless.
Frustrating to read this kind of discussion that skirts around the edges of what's actually going on
The fact that the guy in Missouri even has a car already makes him richer than most global south workers. Poor people in the west can own a phone and a car. Poor people in the global south only dream of owning a phone and a car.
The guy is richer than someone in the global south, sure, but I think his relation to labor and capital is essentially the same. Both sell their labor to live, are exploited to the point of being one bad day from destitution, have no reliable access to capital, etc. For the purposes of building a socialist movement, you can talk to them the same way about many of the same issues, and they have essentially the same incentive to listen.
I just don't see how telling that guy "hey your '05 Camry means you're actually an aristocrat" does anything productive. It's veering into the Fox News bit where they say people who own refrigerators can't be poor.
There's a book called How Capitalism Ends by a guy named Steve Paxton, it's that largely libbed up brand of trot brit socialism but it did have some good points interspersed, one in particular I'm thinking of here is an argument for making a distinction between a "technocracy" and the rest of the working class:
I kind of like this distinction in this context, might be more prudent than labor aristocrat in describing some folks
That's the Professional Managerial Class for ye, guys, mere stewards of capital
Waiiiiit a sec, the value created =/= the wage, no?
So the line would definitely be higher than that.
I'm not sure I follow your question, but capitalists don't pay the total value (IE wages + surplus value), they only pay wages, and there is an international average price of labor power, especially in this globalized world where capital and productive equipment can move freely between borders.
I'm saying the definition you gave refers to "per capita value produced by the working class as a whole" but then you cite median household income (I'm guessing, since the source I found says ~2920/yr for that) as the cutoff value for labor aristocracy vs not. Those aren't the same thing.
I didn't cite median household income. That number is the average wage rate for male workers (in PPP 2007 USD dollars) according to the ILO.
Okay, I guessed since you didn't say, but still, wages don't include the entire "value produced by the working class" so I don't understand how it applies; like how is "adjusted average wage rate for male workers" a better way to measure said value, than say, ppp adjusted GDP per capita (or other measures that incorporate more than just wages)?
https://monthlyreview.org/2012/07/01/the-gdp-illusion/
okay, GDP is a shitty measure, but the core point is that the measure you cite doesn't line up with the supposedly very basic straightforward definition you offered. That's what I don't get.
Edit: and also, I'm talking about global gdp per capita, not gdp per capita in each country, so unequal distribution wouldn't even matter, as long as the total amount figure is still meaningful.
This is not a value judgement. This is a bread and butter argument: global south workers are the primary source of surplus value in the 21st century. That is a fact outside of whatever label you want to give yourself.
I recommend reading John Smith - Imperialism in the 21st century, Zak Cope - Divided world divided class, or for a more introductory book, Jason Hickle - The Divide.
The number I gave above is inflation adjusted. To be more specific showing the divide, these are the numbers from the ILO.
According to the ILO, after inflation adjustments, global north workers make on average ~11x more than global south workers. They're essentially working with capital and productive technology from the 21st century, but getting paid wages from the 1800s.
Ah I think I follow. So PPP-adjusted stands for (purchasing-power-parity-adjusted), and it means that it normalizes the cost of a broad basket of goods. So inflation-adjusted in this context means prices normalized across countries, not $$$-inflation over time.
edit: whenever we post these, that's usually the argument, that things cost more in the global north. But these figures already adjust for that, otherwise the ratio would be probably 1000s of times more.