Currently I’m trying to finish state and revolution (very slowly unfortunately, stagnated even), what should i read afterwards? i would like to move on to intersectional works more relevant towards modern capitalism and our post-industrial gig economy and such

  • T34 [they/them]
    link
    33 years ago

    Settlers is a good one. It’s free at readsettlers.org

    Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism described a new class called the labor aristocracy in imperial countries. Labor aristocrats come from the upper tier of workers and are bribed (structurally, through pensions, health care, good schools, etc.) by the bourgeoisie into supporting imperialism. Lenin showed that these bribes provide a material basis for the opportunism that infected worker movements in the imperialist countries, like Kautsky’s party in Germany.

    Settlers tells the whole history of the US as a development from colonies of petty-bourgeois farmers to a modern imperialist state with a labor aristocracy. It makes the case that white settlers in the US and other white settler states are the core of the labor aristocracy. Whiteness is so closely connected to the labor aristocratic class that when the US was rising as an empire in the early 1900s and needed a bigger labor aristocracy, it expanded the definition of white to include Southern and Eastern Europeans.

    It’s pretty easy to read, the author is a worker writing for other workers.