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or more succinctly
europe be like
We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level. This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
If your political program isn’t based on getting the power to stop imperialism, you’re not only complicit, but are stepping on a rake because the methods of imperialism will inevitably come bouncing back to exploit workers in the core.
From zak cope - divided world, divided class:
Labour Aristocracy
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. The class interests of the labour aristocracy are bound up with those of the capitalist class, such that if the latter is unable to accumulate superprofits then the super-wages of the labour aristocracy must be reduced. Today, the working class of the imperialist countries, what we may refer to as metropolitan labour, is entirely labour aristocratic.
The labour aristocracy provides the major vehicle for bourgeois ideological and political influence within the working class. For Lenin, “opportunism” in the labour movement is conditioned by the preponderance of two major economic factors, namely, either “vast colonial possessions or a monopolist position in world markets.” These allow for ever-greater sections of the metropolitan working class to be granted super-wages so that it is not merely the haute bourgeoisie which subsists on profits. Thus, according to Lenin, it is not simply capitalists who benefit from imperialism:
The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies.
For Lenin, superprofits derived from imperialism allow the globally predominant bourgeoisie to pay inflated wages to sections of the (international) proletariat, who thus derive a material stake in preserving the capitalist system:
In all the civilised, advanced countries the bourgeoisie rob—either by colonial oppression or by financially extracting “gain” from formally independent weak countries—they rob a population many times larger than that of “their own” country. This is the economic factor that enables the imperialist bourgeoisie to obtain super-profits, part of which is used to bribe the top section of the proletariat and convert it into a reformist, opportunist petty bourgeoisie that fears revolution.
There are several pressing reasons why the haute bourgeoisie in command of the heights of the global capitalist economy pays its domestic working class super-wages, even where it is not forced to by militant trade-union struggle within the metropolis.
- Economically, the embourgeoisement of First World workers has provided oligopolies with the secure and thriving consumer markets necessary to capital’s expanded reproduction.
- Politically, the stability of pro-imperialist polities with a working-class majority is of paramount concern to cautious investors and their representatives in government.
- Militarily, a pliant and/or quiescent workforce furnishes both the national chauvinist personnel required to enforce global hegemony and a secure base from which to launch the subjugation of Third World territories.
- Finally, ideologically, the lifestyles and cultural mores enjoyed by most First World workers signifies to the Third World not what benefits imperialism brings, but what capitalist industrial development and parliamentary democracy alone can achieve.
In receiving a share of superprofits, a sometimes fraught alliance is forged between workers and capitalists in the advanced nations. As far back as 1919, the First Congress of the Communist International (COMINTERN) adopted a resolution, agreed on by all of the major leaders of the world Communist movement of the time, which read:
At the expense of the plundered colonial peoples capital corrupted its wage slaves, created a community of interest between the exploited and the exploiters as against the oppressed colonies—the yellow, black, and red colonial people—and chained the European and American working class to the imperialist “fatherland.”
Advocates of imperialism understood very early on that imperialism would and could provide substantial and socially pacifying benefits to the working classes in imperialist countries. Cecil Rhodes, arch-racist mining magnate, industrialist and founder of the white-settler state of Rhodesia, famously understood British democracy as equaling imperialism plus social reform:
I was in the West End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for “bread!” “bread!” and on the way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism … My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and the mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.
My only gripe with your post is this
Today, the working class of the imperialist countries, what we may refer to as metropolitan labour,
I’m sorry, we have so many people in the capitals that are homeless or generally at a verge despite working. How are they labour aristocracy?
Obviously this map is inaccurate because Central and South America, Asia etc should be pits too.
Where can I go to read more about this?
I like Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Is there a website with better security?
ProleWiki is a good one, as davel posted. I link marx2mao because it has some of the best translations available.
Also, John Smith - imperialism in the 21st century.
I hear this all the time but how are they currently doing this? What are some examples?
Multiple ways:
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Unchallenged monopoly over the highest valued African industries. The majority of African export industry, from mineral exports like rare earth and gold to high value agricultural exports like cocoa and coffee, are overwhelmingly dominated by western corporations.
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Direct theft of resources. European companies take advantage of their monopoly on extraction and transport of African minerals to unilaterally export mineral wealth out of Africa and put them into banks and reserves in Europe. For example, France import so much gold from their “former” colonies that it has one of the largest gold reserves in the entire world despite the fact that France doesn’t have a single active gold mine anywhere in it’s sovereign territory.
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Capture of added value from noncompetitive raw exports. Through the IMF and World Bank, the west has put in place a multi-decade scheme of making sure Africa can’t industrialize while pretending to help them. Due to this, African nations don’t have any industry capable of processing their raw crops and minerals, forcing them to sell as-is and let western businesses cash in on the added value of processing them. For example, Ivory coast produce over 40% of the world’s cocoa beans supply, but since until China helped them build one Ivory coast didn’t have any processing plant, Ivory coast for a long time had to sell raw cocoa beans for low prices and let western chocolate, pharmaceutical and makeup corporation earn the added value of roasting and fermenting the beans, separating the oil and making consumer products out of them.
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Exploitation of desperate workers. It is hardly a secret nowadays that Africans working in the mining or high value crops industries are horrifically exploited and work in high mortality rate, near slavery conditions for almost no pay whatsoever. Plenty of documentaries have been made on the subject, especially on Nestle’s treatment of their cocoa producers.
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Unequal exchange. Due to the IMF scheme mentioned in point #3, Africa is stuck producing and exporting noncompetitive, low or no added value products, which translate to low revenues for the countries. The complementary of this fact is that, on the other hand, African nations have to buy every finished high added value products (cars, consumer electronics, machinery, etc…) from the west, generally for very high prices. This unequal exchange, Europe buy only cheap low value goods from Africa, Africa buys only expensive high value goods from Europe, results in a net flow of wealth away from Africa and directly into the pockets of European capitalists. As long as Africa continues to produce only low value goods and buy high value goods from Europe, which the scheme ensure it does, Africa will continue to have their wealth sucked away via this mechanism.
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When a market is fully saturated in one country, the only place corporations can move is outward in order to combat falling rates of profit from competition and monopolization. The global process of Imperialism is found when countries in the Global North outsource production to the Global South, using millitary pressure and financial pressure to force capitulation and domination. These Imperialist countries then carve out as much as they can in resources and cheap labor, while keeping these countries under-developed so these prices stay low.
In other words, the average person in the Global North consumes more than they create, while the average person in the Global South consumes less than they create. It’s almost like the Global North is the Capitalist class, while the Global South is the working class.
I recommend reading Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Cool, now do public education and public roads.
You can have all of the above including education and public roads without ruthlessly exploiting the Global South by shifting to Socialism.
Yet roads and lines of communication make a socialist transition more likely. Almost like the material conditions matter, regardless of the political context.
Kinda? I don’t really see what your point is. Material conditions absolutely matter, but it’s also important to understand that the bribes paid to the proletariat in the Global North are comprehensively stolen from the Global South, and are why there hasn’t been a revolution in the Global North but many in the Global South.
It’s important to understand that any argument against improving one’s material conditions is going to be rightfully ignored. Better to point out that without removing the yoke of power, any concessions can be easily removed.
It isn’t an argument against that, though. It’s an argument that without Socialism and without anti-Imperialism, it heightens Imperialism and exploitation.
