• cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    232·
    5 days ago

    Technically yes, but in practice it’s not that simple. The term labor aristocracy exists for a reason. A minority segment of the working class can be bribed to sufficiently align their material interests with those of capital. On a personal level you can really observe a shift in the mentality of someone who reaches a certain level of wealth, even if they are still technically workers, when their lived experience diverges so much form that of the average working class person, when their material interest becomes tied to maintaining that level of wealth, when the people they surround themselves with are also within the same elevated social strata. They begin to develop a real petty bourgeois mentality that aligns with their non-working class social and material conditions, regardless of how they earn their income.

    I know the relation-to-means-of-production purists don’t want to hear this but this is a real psychological and social phenomenon that we do ourselves a disservice to discount. It’s because this is not always understood that some Marxists get confused as to why so much of the western working class is as reactionary as it is, but you cannot get the full picture just by looking at class in the strictest orthodox Marxist definition alone.

    • Sleepless One@lemmy.mlEnglish
      81·
      5 days ago

      Isn’t the labor aristocracy also ultimately determined by their relationship to the means of production though, with the exploited workers of the imperial periphery made up of toilers who actually produce value and the imperial core workers comprising idlers who sustain ourselves on the labor of the periphery?

  • DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    5 days ago

    It’s that simple in its abstract form, and through dialectical analysis develops nuance based on the conditions and interests of the subjects being examined.

    Imperialist superprofits produce such a surplus that all sorts of subclasses and subsystems and counter-subsystems can develop and, to some degree, coexist within the global capitalist system without being a threat to the whole. Superstructural forces have tremendous power to shape material flows and manipulate local interests in order to preserve the overall structure. The mixed/conflicting material interests of the proletarian and quasiproletarian subclasses within the imperial core can be refocused such that true proletarian interests are obfuscated and de-emphasized in favor of petty bourgeois, faux bourgeois, landowning, aristocratic, and colonial interests.

    Revolution is built through the active development of class consciousness as material conditions produce a universal material interest that can be leveraged to unite diverse subclasses with diverse interests.

    The discussion and debate of which underclass has the most revolutionary potential at any given time has been the core of Marxist thought since its inception. Quality of life and access to life-necessary resources, both of which are heavily influenced by income, are two of the many determinants of revolutionary potential.