(OPE-L) labor aristocracy and exploitation

From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Wed Feb 18 2004 - 19:41:08 EST


Here's the second issue, Cyrus (and others):

> But the concept of global 'social capital' belongs to the fully
>globalized industries.  This does not necessarily contradicts my argument
> the formation of rate of exploitation at the social capital within the
> national entities.  Let me repeat again: I do not object to any empirical
> research.  My objection is to the assertion that individualizes Marx's
> rate of exploitation (i.e., an exploitation that is having to do with a
> particular norm of labor appropriation and associates with particular
> socially necessary abstract labor in capitalism) for individual capital by
> way of decomposition whatever it may be constructed.  This bring us to the
> notion of 'labor aristocracy' and erroneous attribution of exploitation to
> it, rather than identifying it as a another category of bourgeois control
> and oppression.

Why does a notion of labor aristocracy necessarily lead us to the
"erroneous attribution of exploitation" to a labor aristocracy?

 I don't see how it does.  The concept of a labor aristocracy, which is
linked to some theories of imperialism, is a component of a much more
concrete level of analysis (concrete conjunctural, or epochal, class
analysis) which does not attribute exploitation to a labor aristocracy
but rather suggests that there is a segment  of the working-class in the
imperialist nations that materially benefits by the reality of imperial
exploitation and plunder.

 In solidarity, Jerry


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