this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Maoist Third Worldists make a strong case for bourgeoisification.
I think that's changing as the American empire declines, but for a long time the "middle class" directly benefitted from the superexploitation of the 3rd world. It's how their middle incomes could afford so much.
Only because it's widely thought that their incomes had to come from exploiting those beneath them, instead of taking it back from those above.
You're being exploited by someone who tells you that's what it takes and you just have to look below for someone less fortunate than yourself and exploit them. Instead we should come together with those less fortunate and collectively turn our attention to those who have been exploiting all of us to take it back instead of fighting the puppet on the other hand.
Their own lives were comfortable and easy in the middle class. Risking it all for revolution to help other people is not in their class interests.
The middle manager is still being exploited by the CEO, sure, but lets not pretend like the middle manager is a potential revolutionary. How much better could their life actually get? They have a home, vacation, healthcare, education, leisure time, and all the toys they can buy.
But! Like I said, as the American empire declines that changes drastically. Without cheap 3rd world labor to superexploit and with the decline of their own middle incomes, they'll quickly find their comfortable and easy lives disappearing. Suddenly the middle manager isn't so different from the rest of us down in the dirt, and the CEO will still be raking in millions and billions off of their labor.
Once bourgeoisification is reversed, the middle class ceases to exist.
They think it's not in their class interests because they've been conditioned to see themselves as "temporarily impoverished billionaires" and that any day can be their lucky day to join the Big Boys upstairs as long as they keep standing on the backs of theworking class people who are only beneath them because the shiny dress shoes of some 9-5 middle manager that keeps kicking them in the face as he tries to claw his way up an imaginary food chain.
Sorry if I'm getting overly ranty and/or poetic but I feel this should be a no-brainer and I'm getting passionate.
It’s not a no brainer, it’s a point of debate for like over a hundred years and the people who recognize the concept of the Labor Aristocracy as Lenin described it have generally shown to be correct, I don’t have much faith in the revolutionary potential of the people in the imperial core until the empire itself begins failing.
The idea is that superprofits from exploiting foreign workers are distributed broadly enough to the domestic “middle class” to make them comfortable and give them a stake in imperialism and therefore capitalism, so they have little revolutionary potential. And this has mostly been true, though I’d say neoliberalism has been short sighted enough to concentrate the wealth so tightly at the top that conditions have been getting worse for even the “labor aristocracy”, so it may be less true going forward. That and if the third world with the help of China/Russia etc can effectively give imperialists the boot, the imperial core bourgeoisie won’t even have the option of buying off their workers anymore. But that’s something that will take decades to develop.