Sidenote on Sison Review: "White collar workers" and the rate of exploitation MIM disagrees with the definition of rate of exploitation used by Sison and de Lima in "Philippine Economy and Politics" when they discuss white collar workers. If their definition were applied to imperialist countries, it would cloak the transfer of surplus value from the oppressed nations to imperialist country workers, who are disproportionately white collar workers. The following selection illustrates their use of the term: "Through import-export transactions and lending operations, the comprador big bourgeoisie amasses wealth in the form of commercial profit and interest, and draws to itself the highest concentration of capital from the surplus product of the country. Together with the multinational firms, the big comprador firms give the highest salaries to their white collar employees. But the profits are very high and the rate of exploitation is actually the highest. ITAL The profits are drawn not only from the productivity of the employees but from the entire production and distribution system in the country.END"(1) The crux of the matter lies in the fact that the value of the product the capitalist sells consists of not only the productivity of his own workers (let's call it X), but also the productivity of other workers throughout the whole production process (call it Y). Marxists call Y "dead labor." When Sison and de Lima calculate the rate of exploitation, they use the formula: Total profit X + Y - W R1 = ------------ = ---------. Wages W Generally Y (the corrupt commercial capitalist's cut of all the deals it took to get the product to his hands) will be larger than X. This is why Sison and de Lima can say that despite high wages, the rate of exploitation is the highest among white collar workers. The capitalist can even pay his white collar workers more than the value they produced and still make a nice profit, if he sets W larger than X but smaller than X+Y. In this case, the R1 will still be higher than zero (meaning these workers are allegedly exploited), even though these workers are getting back the value they produced for the capitalist plus a chunk of the Y the capitalist stole from workers and peasants. MIM defines the rate of exploitation to be: Surplus value created by these particular workers R2 = ------------------------------------------------- Wages for these particular workers X - W = -----. W The difference is when calculating the rate of exploitation for white collar workers MIM does not count the Y, which they did not produce, only the X, which they did. So in the case discussed above, where W is bigger than X (but the capitalist is still making a profit thanks to the large Y), the rate of exploitation is actually negative. This corresponds to the essence of the situation, which is that the capitalist would be paying off these workers with part of the booty he had amassed from other workers. Of course, in the real world the W for white collar workers might be smaller than X but still be much larger than the W for workers in computer assembly plants. In that case they would enjoy privileges but still be exploited. Determining the relative size of the W and X is a matter of concrete analysis. The point is, if you base your definition of exploitation on R1, you will not be able to see that workers who are subsidized by surplus value taken from other workers are not exploited. That is, W will be bigger than X but you will still be calling these people exploited. MIM constantly talks about this point because MIM crunched the numbers and discovered that for Euro-Amerikans as a whole, W was indeed bigger than X. And Y - representing products stolen from the Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia, Azania, and hundreds of other oppressed nations - was huge.(2) That is why MIM calls the white working class a labor aristocracy. It's not just a matter of higher wages, white workers are not exploited. That has deep implications for revolutionary strategy in the united $tates and the dictatorship of the proletariat in North America. Notes: 1. Philippine Economy and Politics, Aklat ng Bayan publishing House, 1998, pp. 25-26. Emphasis added. Available from MIM. 2. See e.g. MIM Theory 1, MIM Theory 10, and "Imperialism and its class structure in 1997," all available from MIM.