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Quite, the contrary, you are stealing the jobs of Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, Brazilians etc. in financial services, law, real estate etc. It's no secret that under capitalism it takes capital to hire people and your country robs indigenous people of land, robbed Blacks of labor, robs Arabs of oil, robs Chileans of copper and robs the whole Third World today by paying low wages. Not surprisingly the countries ruined by imperialism have fewer good jobs because your country robbed them.
Your competitive urge on this question is what leads you to racism, national chauvinism and war--and then you wonder why there is "terrorism." Under socialism everyone is guaranteed a job anyway.
This is a half-truth about male Amerikan workers of the last 30 years.
It excludes benefits which have exploded thanks to the increased U.$. sponging
off the rest of the world. See MIM Theory #1 for a
treatment of this question.
Ditto the question of declining family pay. It neglects that per persyn pay has
increased in the united $tates in real terms while average family size has declined. In other words,
it's an arithmetic trick.
This myth is how the big and small exploiters make themselves comfortable with the knowledge that Third World
workers average 50 cents an hour in pay. It is a statement that bears no relationship to the facts. In all countries,
some goods are cheaper than in other countries. Overall, to live the same living standard there is not much difference
among the world's countries--certainly nothing that would justify that kind of gap in wages.
Price data shows that the cost of living in Seoul--the largest city of southern Korea with 10 million people
--is 24 percent higher than that in New York City. The difference is not affected by the dollar's exchange rate,
because the Korean currency is more or less fixed by the government in proportion to the U.S. dollar. Other
cities that are more expensive than New York to live in but with lower wages include Brazzaville,
Congo; Taipei,China; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Singapore; Douala, Cameroon; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;
Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Nairobi, Kenya; Dakar, Senegal; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; Amman, Jordan; Jakarta, Indonesia;
Cairo, Egypt and Montevideo, Uruguay. Tied with New York in cost of living are Bangkok, Thailand and Lima, Peru.
Only 12 cities out of 125 surveyed have costs of living less than 80 percent of that in New York. Bombay and New Delhi, India
are the most important of these, ranking in at 76 percent of New York City costs. Another three cities in that category are from Canada,
which is an indication that the difference in costs of living internationally is not radical.
MIM Notes citing Source: USA Today International Edition 9June1995, p. 2a.
There is no factual proof of this. Bourgeois studies of international labor productivity do not back this assumption of the
racists and national chauvinists.
MIM handles the productivity comparison globally in this book as well.
Imagine what they would have said before the U.S. Civil War, because fewer than 10% of whites wanted to give Blacks the right
to vote and otherwise treat them equally at that time: "Of course we cannot give Blacks the right to vote" they would have said, because
it would be politically unwise.
These supposedly tactically shrewd people have given up the goal of fighting exploitation and for humyn harmony. We should
let bourgeois politicians say things like that. We need a movement to get things done.
See also, Why don't you tone it down?
This argument is very similar to the one above. In 1860, their program in the South would have been to support the Southern battle
against tariffs and to side with the small slave-owners against the big ones. We can just see the Ralph Nader of that day
running around campaigning with the slaveowners of 10 or fewer slaves, the same way he is campaigning for small
and medium-sized corporations today. Simultaneously he would be assuring non-slaveowner
consumers of slave-produced commodities that he would either not change the system or find other slaves to keep the prices down.
It begs the question: where would you stand if the minority happened to be slaves.
There was no progressive way to stand up for the economic demands of small slaveowners
or consumers of slave-produced commodities in the 1800s and there is no progressive way
to stand up for the demands of small exploiters today. Before getting stuck on this question, people
should ask themselves what they wish they would have done had they lived in 1860.
MIM does stand for the economic demands of the majority, the 90% of the world.
We have to understand what a
small fraction of the world the Amerikan, Japanese and EU petty-bourgeoisie is.
See our response to a letter advising alliance with the petty-bourgeoisie in Amerika
Contrary to the myth that most Amerikans are getting poorer, in fact, most are living in ever greater luxury
obtained from pillaging the Third World.
Let's quote some facts about U.$. conditions and those in official poverty: "For example, the average persyn in 1970
had 478 square feet of house space. In the mid-1990s the figure was 814. Color TV went from 34% ownership to
97.9% ownership.(p. 7) Going to college went from 25.4% of high school graduates in 1970 to 60% in 1996.(p. 56)
"In 1971, 31.8% of all households had air- conditioners. In 1994, 49.6% of households below the poverty-line had
air-conditioners.(pp. 14-5) The poor also do better than 1971 U.S. households in clothes dryers, dishwashers,
refrigerators, stoves, microwaves, VCRs and Personal Computers. That is not comparing the poor of now with
the poor of the past. We are comparing the poor of now with all households of 1971 and the poor of now are better off."
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/books/ capital/cox.html
Under capitalism, debt is actually a sign of the ability to pay as recognized by banks. Wealthier people have more debts. What is important
is the net worth and physical standard of living. Even if credit card companies do make more money than ever, it does not prove anything
unless the physical living standard, consumption of actual commodities declines and there is no proof of that.
Anxieties concerning debt are real, but most such concerns are bourgeois anxieties, the same ones Donald Trump has to have.
Third World debts are smaller relatively speaking, but have a real effect on real proletarians.
The fact is that Amerikan workers own monopoly capitalist companies in airlines, groceries, car rental and many other industries--outright.
That is not including via pension funds.
Nor is that counting what happens in bankruptcy court where we find out who owned the company all along--again, often the "workers."
Finally, we have to learn to recognize that net worth is means of production, in which home equity and pension funds have
to be counted. Many capitalist investors also do not own literal means
of production. They have millions in cash or certificates of deposit. It means they have access to the means of production and this
is something small exploiters also have. Many have sufficient access to the means of production to be able to hire hundreds of Indian
workers on their credit cards.
Others such as the contractors in Iraq gain access to the means of production strictly through their political alliance with the imperialists
and this is what allows them to appropriate Third World labor and natural resources time and time again. It's about time Marxists accounted
for it. In the end the real proof of the ownership of the means of production in a political world with various forms of business partnership and
an expanding repertoire of investment forms is the ability to appropriate labor and the small exploiters that constitute the U.$., British, French,
Swiss, Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian and Japanese majority do have that ability.
The big exploiters are much bigger than the small exploiters, but the big exploiters do not rake in enough profits in a year for there to be any
exploitation of the people MIM is calling small exploiters. For example, $500 billion a year in profits is too small compared with salaries
and exploitation of the Third World to be stemming from exploitation of U.$. "workers."
There are two parts to this argument: 1) We are benefitting the oppressed nation bourgeoisie. 2) We fail to see the humynist aspects
of Marxism that allow even imperialist country whites to play a role.
We would point out that the white nationalist parties calling themselves Marxist-Leninist are usually good at sniffing out the Third World bourgeoisie,
but not so good at sniffing out the imperialist country labor aristocracy bourgeoisie, the more numerous petty-bourgeoisie. The ultimate
reason for this is an economically warped view of the world that does not account for the fact that the English minimum wage worker is in the
top 10% of the world by income. (See our discussion of this of how the imperialist country workers
are the global elite, the petty-bourgeoisie.)
What is more, the Third World bourgeoisie may have a progressive role to play in some agrarian contexts. The labor aristocracy has no
historically progressive role to play, for the same reason that small slaveowners did not have a progressive economic role in the Civil War.
Bourgeois humynism has always given the exploiters breathing room. It's no different in the case of the imperialist country exploiters
known as labor aristocracy.
In MIM's experience, much of the resistance to its line is white hysteria--an emotion based in no real reading
or listening. White hysteria also infects some people of color seeking to conform to Amerikan culture.
Before MIM, there was the Black Panther Party, again targetted as some novel anti-white group instead of
the 1960s Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. Going back and reading BPP critics or watching television news interviews
from the 1960s, white hysteria is plain.
Before the BPP, contrary to almost all of MIM's critics, Lenin ordered that the line be there is a Black nation in the united $tates. Then Stalin
specifically ordered that we oppose the white nation, white chauvinism and white imperialism. It is NOT MIM introducing
any of that for the first time. People saying so reveal that they practice white worker identity politics.
Not only Stalin ordered the specific usage of the terms "white chauvinism" and "white oppressor nation" in
connection to super-profits and the labor aristocracy. Others in the Comintern did the same thing. One named Pepper
proposed the MIM line in its entirety long before World War II! Pepper ended up writing important official papers
on the Black nation.
Here is one from the Comintern-backed Communist Party of the United $tates in 1928 using ALL the language
MIM subsequently used.
In actuality, the MIM line is resuscitated language and line that existed in the 1920s and 1930s applied to
today's conditions. The only difference is that whereas Pepper tried to pass a line and failed, MIM
has adopted the line on the labor aristocracy all the way, with confidence thanks to the change
in conditions since then. Because white exploiters dominate even Marxist language today in the united $tates
few people know this. Those that insist MIM made up all the talk of white chauvinism and the white oppressor
nation are hysterical chauvinists. If you are talking to such a persyn, you have a pretty good indication
that you are wasting your time: chances are good that customary oppressor usage of Marxist terms
is all that the people stuck in white hysteria can understand, because it conforms to a fantasy of a white
proletariat that has not existed for decades.
What portion of the world is some kind of bourgeoisie, petty or capitalist is not up to the individual exploiter.
People who think in these terms don't understand that classes are society-wide. In a sense, competitive capitalists
all wish there were no other exploiters, but they never get their way. MIM did not make that up and the concept
of labor aristocracy did not either. Before there was any discussion of super-profits and labor aristocracy,
each individual bourgeois had to work with other members of their class and form business partnerships.
Not even Bill Gates can get around that. So this is really the same thing as asking why there is more than
one capitalist in the world. It's an attempt to vulgarize the question to the individual level when obviously
the answer is not at that level.
See our article on Germany in World War II and its aftermath
See our article on Paris, 1968
Our wages are down.
Their wages are lower, because their cost of living is lower.
They earn less, because they don't work as hard or aren't as smart.
It's politically unwise to offend the Amerikan workers by calling them exploiters.
You should support the economic demands of the majority.
Most Amerikans live at subsistence level.
Amerikan consumer debt is piling up.
Most Amerikan workers do not own the means of production.
Your argument is too nationalist or race-oriented.
You are the first to say this line is Marxist: you're actually an anti-white hate group.
Why would the capitalists buy off the labor aristocracy instead of making more profit?
Why are strikes and violently repressed strikes declining in imperialist countries?
Where in history has there ever been a revolution by a population of a majority unproductive sector workers?
Why did German so-called workers fail to revolt when Hitler's army was smashed?
Why did all the French rebels pass on seizing power when
there was a physical chance for revolution when the government abdicated in 1968?
Study materials: