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Does it harm the global proletariat to fight for improved conditions in the imperial core?
(hexbear.net)
Saw this comment on the commie side of TikTok. My gut tells me this is ultraleft bs, but perhaps my fellow hexbears can educate me on this discussion which I’m sure is not new.
I don’t see how a poor American on food stamps is responsible, even though a systematic analysis reveals that international superexploitation is a thing.
The American proletariat can and should organize in any case. I don’t see how Americans can build any sort of socialist movement if any organization at all is accused of being hypocritical.
I agree. I have a few more thoughts to add to this.
Workers in the imperial core have a responsibility to see past their immediate circumstances in order to understand that the exploitation of the global proletariat is fundamentally linked with their own exploitation. That although a worker in a rich country may be materially better off than a worker in a poor country, they have more in common, in terms of class position, with the global proletariat than with the bourgeoisie. A western worker who doesn't identify with the global proletariat has an incorrect understanding of their own position.
Superexploitation is not only real, but absolutely integral to contemporary capitalism. Therefore anti-imperialism is an indispensable part of any anti-capitalist movement. A movement which aims only to improve working conditions in rich countries is basically a white socialism, a socialism aiming only for the economic liberation of a subset of privileged workers (the labor aristocracy).
However, it doesn't follow that any organization whatsoever in rich countries is identical to a labor-aristocratic struggle.
If the global average wage is, say, $1 per hour, this says nothing about the material conditions of a worker receiving this average wage. In the US, this wage corresponds to far fewer goods than in Bangladesh. So it would be severely over-simplifying to simply compare a given worker's salary to the global average and declare that any worker earning above the average is benefiting from imperialism, therefore labor-aristocratic. There must necessarily be an analysis of the material conditions of that worker where they live. As well, in the US for example, 7.5% of the population is unemployed or under-employed. This population may receive a wage many times larger than the global average, yet still be unable to afford food or housing or medical care. It would be wrong to say that these people share a class interest with the lanyards working in DC merely because they are American workers.