He seems to be one of the most hated figures on the online left. From my view, he does have a lot of questionable takes, but also does bring up some good points when it comes to fighting imperialism from a leftist perspective, so I’d like to know what people in this community think about him.
There is a recording of Divided World, Divided Class on youtube by dessalines, I do highly encourage you to read it.
To give a simple analogy, lets compare house and field slaves, and see how they correlate to imperial core (largely service economy) workers and global south proletarians.
House slaves: Do not produce commodities for the market. Produce use values (meals, clothes, clean house, etc) that are immediately consumed. Lives off the Surplus value created by the field slaves, that the slave master apportions for them. Very small numbers compared to field slaves. While still being slaves, live an undeniably easier life than field slaves. Cannot really be a revolutionary group, since they do not control production. Many of them actively fight to maintain field slavery, since their lives are supported by field surplus.
Imperial core workers: Do not produce commodities, mainly just put final touches, branding, or do maintenance and services for the commodities produced by global south proletarians (GSP) . Much fewer of them than GSPs ( I think there are 5x more GSPs) , so its easily possible to pay them superwages out of the surplus value / superprofits created by GSPs. Undeniably live a better life than the average GSP. Many fight to preserve imperialism, knowing that they derive existing benefits from it. Revolutionary potential very debatable, since they do not control production, or produce commodities ( what imperial core country has had a revolution so far? Imperialism exports revolution and quells it at home).
by who? ;)
I will check it out
To say this categorically is too much. There is a great number of service sector workers in the US. And I agree wholeheartedly that there is something fundamentally different about this type of workers you describe. The analogy you make is a good one. But there are still a great number of workers who do produce commodities.
About 22 million actually according to the US bureau of labor. Not a lot, but keep in mind that not even half of Americans have a job in the first place. And being official statistics, I believe this does not include undocumented workers. These are coal miners, construction workers, foresters, farmers.
I agree that right now, there is no revolutionary potential in America. But can you say for certain this will not be the case in 20 years? Isn’t there still work to be done today?