This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Minimum wage for war

May 25 2007

The media got around to covering that the Democrats caved on Iraq. Readers could have heard MIM tell them what is going on on April 23 in our story "Democrats cave as usual." The imperialists wanted to keep running the war and the public did not, so in an ages-old pattern, the imperialists tightened their alliance with the labor aristocracy by boosting the minimum wage.(1) The Democrats coughed up $100 billion for the war that will last till at least till September and in the same law the minimum wage will go up.

The blame for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan falls completely on the Democrats, because had they not passed any money in a bill, Bush would have had to withdraw from Iraq. He simply would have run out of money to run the war.

Although the original German nationalism was tied up with a dictator named Otto von Bismarck that offered social reforms to form a German identity, it was the British who first offered swag from the empire toward buying off the workers to such an extent that Engels said the workers had become "bourgeois":

"The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that the ultimate aim of this most bourgeois of all nations would appear to be the possession, alongside the bourgeoisie, of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat. In the case of a nation which exploits the entire world this is, of course, justified to some extent."

F. Engels, October 7, 1858 "Letter to Marx"

President Bush signed the law May 25. It will raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour now to $7.25 an hour in 2009. The raise will put full-time U.$. minimum wage workers solidly within the 10% of the world by income, whereas they had been at approximately the top 12 or 13% position.

Lately, professionals working at imperialist- and UN-supported foundations and institutions are catching up with MIM and pay more attention to international "ventiles" in income. Ventiles are interesting because every country has a handful of rich people and at least some people in an illegal position under difficulties. But when we look at 5% of a country's people we are taking a substantial chunk.

For example, according to the imperialists' World Bank, in France now, the poorest 5% of people--regardless of holding a job or not--are in the top 28% of the world, and even that MIM would say is an underestimate. In any case, if we take Indonesia, the richest 5% of people would only be at the top 44% percentile level globally.(2) The stunning truth is that in ventile analysis, there is no overlap between the ventiles of France and Indonesia once translated to international ranking, because all of Indonesia is so low and all of France so high. Scientists would then say that the "between-country variation" is the more important part of the game than the "within country variation."

This goes to show that the poorest people of France are better off than the richest of Indonesia. This is another reason that the true "middle forces" in the world are members of the bourgeoisie of the Third World.

The various lying social-chauvinists will say that income is not access to the means of production, but actually it derives from access to the means of production. These running dogs deserve the firing squad for misleading the international proletariat on behalf of the warmongering, majority-exploiter countries. Globally, the proletariat must push aside the leaders trying to throw dust in the eyes of the exploited.

Amerikan minimum wage workers have access to the means of production better than the top 5% of Indonesia. MIM has also presented data on asset percentiles of the world, but let any stupid revisionist willing to do so come forward now and say in print that Amerikans are not in the top 10% or 15% of the world by assets, only income. As usual we get all kinds of stupid provincialists passing themselves off as "informed," including vastly more white nationalist PhDs than people who can look at questions objectively from a global perspective.

The fact that the minimum wage law went through as part of the Iraq funding bill only proves that even the lowest skilled workers with legal working rights in the united $tates have access to what Engels referred to as the pool of social capital. The minimum wage rise in the united $tates is only for the labor aristocracy within u.$. borders, and the important point is that the only bourgeoisified so- called workers who ever have their minimum wages raised in this means belong to the imperialist countries. In ordinary oppressed nations, there are no spoils from conquest to offer. So the Iraq War has brought about another super-profit redistribution toward the Amerikan petty- bourgeoisie referred to as "minimum wage workers."

Everywhere in the world, the petty-bourgeoisie that does best is often that with a strong alliance with the upper ranks of the capitalist class. "Business alliances" pay off, and so it is with the Iraq War. The phony Marxist organizations in denial about the true class position of Amerikans have no explanation how they appropriate so much labor if they are not petty-bourgeoisie. Almost all the organizations calling themselves "Marxist" are not in the proletarian camp allied with MIM. They are working for the exploiters. The cheerleading for the poorest legal so-called workers in the united $tates only gives the imperialists a chance to boost support for the Iraq War.

Notes:
1. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/24/politics/main2851044.shtml?source=mostpop_story
2. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTDECINEQ/Resources/GlobalIncomeInequality.pdf, p. 13. Branko Milanovic, "Global Income Inequality: A Review."