This is a contentious subject. Please keep the discussion respectful. I think this will get more traction, here, but I’ll cross-post it to !Communism, too.

Workers who sell their labour power for a wage are part of the working class, right? They are wage-workers because they work for a wage. Are they wage-labourers?

“They’re proletariat,” I hear some of you shout.

“Not in the imperial core! Those are labour aristocrats,” others reply.

So what are the workers in the imperial core? Are they irredeemable labour aristocrats, the inseparable managers and professionals of the ruling class? Or are they proletarian, the salt of the earth just trying to get by?

It’s an important distinction, even if the workers in any country are not a homogenous bloc. The answer determines whether workers in the global north are natural allies or enemies of the oppressed in the global south.

The problem is as follows.

There is no doubt that people in the global north are, in general, more privileged than people in the global south. In many cases, the difference in privilege is vast, even among the wage-workers. This is not to discount the suffering of oppressed people in the global north. This is not to brush away the privilege of national bourgeois in the global south.

For some workers in the global north, privilege amounts to basic access to water, energy, food, education, healthcare, and shelter, streetlights, paved highways, etc. As much as austerity has eroded access to these basics, they are still the reality for the majority of people in the north even, to my knowledge, in the US.

Are these privileges enough to move someone from the ranks of the proletariat and into the labour aristocracy or the petit-bourgeois?

I’m going to discuss some sources and leave some quotes in comments, below. This may look a bit spammy, but I’m hoping it will help us to work through the several arguments, that make up the whole. The sources:

  • Settlers by J Sakai
  • Corona, Climate, and Chronic Emergency by Andreas Malm
  • The Wealth of Nations by Zac Cope
  • ‘Decolonization is Not a Metaphor’ by Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang.

I have my own views on all this, but I have tried to phrase the points and the questions in a ’neutral’ way because I want us to discuss the issues and see if we can work out where and why we conflict and how to move forwards with our thinking (neutral to Marxists, at least). I am not trying to state my position by stating the questions below, so please do not attack me for the assumptions in the questions. By all means attack the assumptions and the questions.

  • @CountryBreakfast
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    21 year ago

    Give the indigenous sovereignty and follow their leadership.

    Yes exactly. And there are plenty of ways to aid in entrenching Indigenous leadership and sovereignty. Comrades need to get to know the local Tribes and what problems they face. Sometimes they are quite specific to Indigenous circumstances that settlers may be unaware of, others might be entirely universal.

    There are oftentimes material struggles like access to water or resources, legal struggles like ICWA etc, political struggles like local governments or oligarchs encroaching on sovereignty, land back movements.

    I also encourage comrades to consider learning Indigenous languages if possible and participate in “revitalization” efforts.

    My advice is to do so with humility, respect, sensitivity, and be eager to learn things you didn’t know you needed to know. Be willing to be uncomfortable and don’t think your marxism makes you special but also do give your perspective when it is relevant.

    • @redteaOP
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      31 year ago

      with humility, respect, sensitivity, and be eager to learn things you didn’t know you needed to know

      ^ Crucial.

      Be willing to be uncomfortable and don’t think your marxism makes you special but also do give your perspective when it is relevant.

      I’ve been looking into race for a while now. It’s been a strange time. I still get uncomfortable talking about race with black people, especially liberals, partly because I read Marxist sources (e.g. Fanon and Stuart Hall) so I’m often working off different assumptions that could make it seem as if I (a white person) am telling black people what race/ism is. I hope I don’t come off in this way when I do give my view; and if I succeed in that, it’s due to those first factors, above.

      One book that helped me re-frame a lot of issues was Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. It should be required reading for every school-leaver; like, that’s the final exam, ‘read the book’. It’s punchy, well-written, and easy to read (linguistically – some of the facts and messages will anger anti-racists and may induce cognitive dissonance for racists and anti-racists alike).