These kids must be in a Maoist English dual immersion program. Good for them
/uj
I've never understood this because labor aristocracy has a simple, concise definition:
The labour aristocracy is that section of the international working class whose privileged position in the lucrative job markets opened up by imperialism guarantees its receipt of wages approaching or exceeding the per capita value created by the working class as a whole.
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
labor aristocrats are people who are getting "cut in" on the profits of imperialism
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.
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:
It's important to note that the technocracy are not excluded from the proletariat because they earn too much money, or because they enjoy a large degree of autonomy in their work. It is the effective (though incomplete) control they exercise over productive assets by virtue of their technical knowledge that separates them from the proletariat. They make largely autonomous decisions about how and where productive assets will be deployed, and the expert knowledge which gives them the ability to do so puts them in a different relationship to both the means of production and to the bourgeoisie than that of the proletarian. At the same time, they do not enjoy the full range of ownership rights over the assets they control – they cannot sell or bequeath them for example. This limitation sets them apart from the petty-bourgeoisie.
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)?
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.
haha, yeah just like me fr fr nothing sus Ohio I'm rizzmaxing and youth pilled
Hell yeah, but can you not dox me next time?
Everyone on Hexbear is a liberal, except for me
There’s only one true leftist on hexbear, and we all have to share them
that can't be right, because everyone on hexbear is a liberal except for ME
We love our zoomer vanguard folks
i dont know how to word this well, but this meme feels kinda sus - the POC emojis with the white kids is classic trope to imply that any POC on a leftist forum are actually white kids LARPing, which feels kinda shitty in the context of Hexbear already having problems with POC folk feeling sidelined
just saying
I stole it from somewhere else, and I didn't notice the emojis but yeah, I've edited out the emojis now
thank you 
I didn't notice initially, yea that does seem kinda gross.
Kid forgot to sign it with 
, smh what a lib, L
ngl a lot of the stuff I see on here does make me feel pretty old
Everyone here is a kkkkrackkker except for me
I wish I had a 17” laptop
anarKKKiddies
this is a kind-spirited joke pls no ban
Maoist vernacular English, a rare W for them.
dank memes
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for white settlers, then a generation after the closing of the frontier you had the New Deal, then the postwar economic boom, then the tech boom. People in any capitalist country can dream of striking it truly rich, but for most of U.S. history (again, at least for white folks) it was pretty easy to dream of landing in a spot where you're worried more about retirement and passing wealth along to your kids than you are about putting food on the table this week.