If that comes with higher wages then the worker can keep up with inflation and no one notices much other than the fact that their savings literally lose value over time
Inflation is mostly due to higher wages, and savings. Savings are reinvested by banks and turned into new constant and variable capital (hiring more workers). It can be turned into new consumption (like video games, social media, more advertising). It can be turned into student loans, and mortgages (if there is a surplus of money-capital all of these things will get more expensive relative the the unit of money), and “gentrification” re-developments or new suburban developments. Your savings become a smaller share of the MOP because they got invested elsewhere and more things were made or labor paid because of it! Simultaneously capital will be exported, mostly to China, where it is used to decrease the prices of expensive goods like video game consoles and microwaves (which is why they have gotten cheaper since the 80s/90s). The increase in the prices of other goods are due to the increases of incomes whether directly or indirectly through cheaper living and therefore savings, this causes the propertied classes to raise prices to capture these excess monies in savings so they can maintain their relative share of ownership. The bourgeoisie does not want dollars sitting around, they want them put into motion so they can be accumulated. This means increased consumption, and consumption remains high. USians consume way more than the global south citizens do.
Though again, buying lots of things and not saving money doesn’t mean your life is actually getting worse! The “60 percent of USians are paycheck to paycheck” talking point in media obfuscates that the median US worker makes hundreds of thousands a year, that 60% must include people doing better than the median worker.
All that said, family incomes have not changed beyond historical levels for the bottom 20%, all other brackets are growing, and there are more families.
We are now seeing inflation actually outpace workers, they are not just making more to pay their higher bills and it’s lead to the recent labor upsurge.
The recent “labor upsurge” was pandemic related, just as inflation was largely pandemic related due to transportation delays and more spending per-worker on minimal safety precautions (with some level of “greed-flation” but again that’s just opportunism on behalf of the bourgs).
You say “capital exports bring down the prices of goods” yet we are also talking about conditions of strong inflation. Is this not a contradiction? Does this not indicate that capital exports are falling, and that demand for USD is falling? You say nothing has changed, but despite the harshest sanctions regime in history we have seen Russia’s economy continue to grow! We are seeing nations make deals with each other in national currencies, totally bypassing USD. We are seeing alternatives to the World Bank and IMF, which offer loans in currencies other than USD.
None of this really effects US workers, besides the tech sector and the housing bubble (this means less workers able to speculate on land) which was being supplied by Counter-revolutionary Russian Bourgs who parked their money in the US for these “industries”. This does explain some of the attention TikTok is getting as US-based companies are losing their technology monopolies. However, conditions for Imperialism are still better than when the USSR existed. Capital exports of specific commodities are decreased when that specific commodity making capital is exported, but it need not be existing machines. GM mostly built new machines in their transition to Mexico and the US factories make largely high end cars and trucks now, while Mexicans make the lower end vehicles which are sold to US GM workers lol. Surplus-Capital either finds new industries or expands elsewhere, but this could easily be to an underdeveloped sector in an Imperialist ally (such as Germany, South Korea). You’re right that if not enough surplus-capital finds a home, that the value of dollars goes down, this is effected by dollar demand but also capital exports can take the form of bombs, ultimately the destruction of capital, which allows for demand to be re-established. New sources of consumption counter-balance inflation, essentially, which is why the US is the least susceptible state to inflation.
This is not universal, obviously. The wages of managers, cops, so-called skilled laborers, bureaucrats, etc have risen in pace with inflation. We have seen some workers keep up and other workers fall behind, splitting off those workers and debourgeoisifying them as they fail to save and fail to attain property and fail to get “ahead.” I’m not sure why you’re insisting this isn’t happening.
This is due to what I said above, that people are saving money, so loans get more expensive because there is a surplus of capital to be turned into loans (they make bigger loans because they can find people to take them). This makes college and housing more expensive. Local landlord regimes (city-government “deep states”) subsidize development to attract higher wage sectors like tech so they can realize more real-estate capital in the form of land-values and rents. So you’re right that wage differentiation has something to do with cost increases, but again 4/5th of USian incomes are increasing yoy, overall the bulk is on the upswing. You must be reading too much Hudson to think that the dollar system itself is the source of inflation, no, it’s actually “unequal exchange” and the increased wages it brings.
What productive assets do they own? I think they’re a special protected class created by the State, and while their class interests align with business owners and independent farmers they are still distinct and it’s worth recognizing it.
The petty-bourgeoisie need not actually own productive assets, this is an overly mechanical analysis of petty bourg classes. Lenin and Mao referred to academics, teachers, doctors, and nurses to be petty-bourgeoisie, see the source in my other comment on the Middle Classes in Britain. The petty-bourgeoisie is simply non-capitalists and non-proletarians converging into a “middle strata”.
We’ve also seen the contract fights have not focused on wages. While the companies have been throwing record wages at workers the contracts still get rejected because what they actually want is time away from work and time where they can’t be scheduled and an end to understaffing, or like you say, workers’ health and wellness.
To a certain extent, working hours struggles are progressive, to another extent, they are simply wage struggles hidden behind math. In an Imperial economy where wages are already built from stolen labor of the global proletariat, cutting hours in Imperialist states comes at the expense of the global proletariat, it’s ultimately reactionary organizing unless it doubles with demands of a shorter working day globally for all workers, i.e. proletarian internationalism.
But we are also seeing union locals organizing against the Zionist genocide. That’s huge! The labor upsurge might be gaining a political character and you seem to be ignoring it in favor of pessimism. The union leadership is still in lockstep with the Democrats, and as long as that is the case they will hit those dead ends, but if I’m right and the rank-and-file are being debourgeoisified then we are going to either see the leadership change or we’ll see the NLRB declared unconstitutional and unions will have to go back to illegal strikes.
Where? Outside of the walk-outs of academics who some happened to be in the UAW, there hasn’t been any anti-Imperialist actions by US unions. They make statements but my dog could make just as valuable of a statement if she could write. Opportunist gonna opportunist, this isn’t a sign of anything lasting, if it was they’d be seizing land and handing them over to the Indigenous peoples as we speak. UAW would divest from weapons manufacturing and Israeli settlements. The academic protesters only jumped in when their students were getting beat up by pigs, again a valiant action, but ultimately has not progressed the struggle. The youth are always worth agitating but it’s important they can’t be lead by Opportunists in the union movement and academic circles. As seen Liberals also protest, doesn’t mean Liberals or union-locals have developed more class consciousness beyond white guilt for being in-Empire.
Nothing novel has occurred between this moment and the anti-Vietnam days besides much less whites caring because they successfully got the draft paused indefinitely. When union workers start destroying weapons manufacturing equipment I’ll have to change my mind, but that seems to be far from where we are, and the “toughest actions” have been climbing (office, not factory) buildings and tagging them with paint.
Inflation is mostly due to higher wages, and savings. Savings are reinvested by banks and turned into new constant and variable capital (hiring more workers). It can be turned into new consumption (like video games, social media, more advertising). It can be turned into student loans, and mortgages (if there is a surplus of money-capital all of these things will get more expensive relative the the unit of money), and “gentrification” re-developments or new suburban developments. Your savings become a smaller share of the MOP because they got invested elsewhere and more things were made or labor paid because of it!
“Savings savings savings” you say, and yet the rate of savings has been declining since the 60s and right now is on par with the period just before the 2008 financial crash. Savings are not an explanation for the inflation we are seeing and this is another contradiction to your claims: if savings are a source of inflation, and savings are down, where is the inflation coming from? Is it only coming from wage increases like is being claimed by bourgeois economists? I’m skeptical, and so I’m hypothesizing that the inflation is geopolitical.
You’re right that if not enough surplus-capital finds a home, that the value of dollars goes down, this is effected by dollar demand but also capital exports can take the form of bombs, ultimately the destruction of capital, which allows for demand to be re-established. New sources of consumption counter-balance inflation, essentially, which is why the US is the least susceptible state to inflation.
And yet, the state is grappling with inflation despite being the least susceptible state to inflation. Does this not indicate a change?
Do you think the bourgeois want a high interest rate environment? Do you think they want the global South to turn to other countries for loans?
In an Imperial economy where wages are already built from stolen labor of the global proletariat, cutting hours in Imperialist states comes at the expense of the global proletariat, it’s ultimately reactionary organizing unless it doubles with demands of a shorter working day globally for all workers, i.e. proletarian internationalism.
One thing that stood out to me was the demands for an end to understaffing, which necessarily means hiring more people. It’s not quite internationalism, no, but it does benefit the internally colonized people who could gain employment instead of being forced to fill the ranks of the gig economy and reserve army of unemployed workers.
I will acknowledge the labor upsurge lacks enough international character. I’ll be watching for who starts to organize migrant temp workers first.
Where? Outside of the walk-outs of academics who some happened to be in the UAW, there hasn’t been any anti-Imperialist actions by US unions.
UAW International is calling for a ceasefire, a full list of unions who have signed on can be found here. I’m not overly impressed by their calls, they only call for Israelis to be released when they should be calling for a hostage exchange and acknowledge that the Zionists have been taking Palestinians hostage by the thousands into detention centers, but they aren’t just silently supporting Israel either.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union recently shut down the Port of Oakland to prevent ships carrying weapons bound for Israel from leaving the docks. In fact, the ILWU has a long history of being interested in and supportive of Palestinian liberation going back decades because of their internationalist character that was cultivated during the anti-apartheid struggle against South Africa.
It’s not just academics. The labor upsurge is gaining a political character. Something is happening.
When union workers start destroying weapons manufacturing equipment I’ll have to change my mind, but that seems to be far from where we are, and the “toughest actions” have been climbing (office, not factory) buildings and tagging them with paint.
I’ll cheer when that happens, and you’re right to point out the lacking radicalism in US unions. Yet, you’re underestimating the importance of public demonstration and should recognize that even non-destructive acts still act as propaganda for further radical action. Tagging a building with paint can be a precursor to tagging it with… something else.
I don’t share your pessimism for the white US working class. I think we’re on the brink of a change and these are all signs.
“Savings savings savings” you say, and yet the rate of savings has been declining since the 60s and right now is on par with the period just before the 2008 financial crash. Savings are not an explanation for the inflation we are seeing and this is another contradiction to your claims: if savings are a source of inflation, and savings are down, where is the inflation coming from? Is it only coming from wage increases like is being claimed by bourgeois economists? I’m skeptical, and so I’m hypothesizing that the inflation is geopolitical.
I already pointed out that inflation, the value of the dollar, compared to 2019 is due to pandemics slowing shipping down, you literally had to pay for more labor for the same amount of goods shipped --> increased costs of goods. Sanctions also increase shipping costs --> increased costs of goods. The bulk of American workers are getting wealthier, thus inflation for even things like apples and watermelon, because there are more people who will spend that money. The struggle between US workers and US petty bourgs over who gets a bigger share of Imperialism does nothing to advance Communism. Savings rate propaganda induced by bourgeois media promotes Economistic organizing, again 6 figure workers spending their full monthly paycheck, whether to rents, social security and retirement funds (savings but not called savings), student/mortgage/consumer loans (others’ savings), gambling/gatcha/collecting, “investing” in bubbles (housing, crypto, Tesla stock, “retail” investment has been growing ala “roaring 20s”), or doordash for every meal does not mean these workers are going to be any more interested in proletarian revolution.
And yet, the state is grappling with inflation despite being the least susceptible state to inflation. Does this not indicate a change?
Inflation rates in the US have never been more stable than the last 3 decades.
Do you think the bourgeois want a high interest rate environment? Do you think they want the global South to turn to other countries for loans?
Interest rates are still historically low. Many loans were forgiven so the recent rise in interest rates seeks to slow down borrowing that the pandemic induced to absorb stimmy checks. It’s all about inducing circulation or slowing it down when the bourgs want to.
One thing that stood out to me was the demands for an end to understaffing, which necessarily means hiring more people. It’s not quite internationalism, no, but it does benefit the internally colonized people who could gain employment instead of being forced to fill the ranks of the gig economy and reserve army of unemployed workers.
This is not a new demand, it’s consistent with Imperialist union activity historically. This type of reform still works on behalf of Imperialism to delay national liberation, it’s certainly a contradiction we intend to exploit where available to us, though this requires we have an even stronger anti-Colonial line since making more oppressed nation bourgs adds troubling revisionisms to the movement.
they only call for Israelis to be released when they should be calling for a hostage exchange and acknowledge that the Zionists have been taking Palestinians hostage by the thousands into detention centers, but they aren’t just silently supporting Israel either.
So it’s a bourgeois humanist position, without a hint of Marxism, and covering the true nature of Zionism and US labor’s role in occupation and genocide? Color me surprised, this is nothing to celebrate, we’ve seen it before:
In fact, the ILWU has a long history of being interested in and supportive of Palestinian liberation going back decades because of their internationalist character that was cultivated during the anti-apartheid struggle against South Africa.
Don’t downplay the role of conditional solidarity in shaping the demands of a Decolonization struggle. The form of the ANC now can’t be separated from the way in which Apartheid “ended” (who owns the land and bread?). The same goes for these “anti-Zionist”-but-nowhere-anti-Zionist gestures that push blame on the Resistance and deny the reality of settler-Colonialism in Palestine.
Yet, you’re underestimating the importance of public demonstration and should recognize that even non-destructive acts still act as propaganda for further radical action.
This must have been said during every US involved war ever. I think such acts result because such bloodshed exists, before the bloodshed, none of them cared. After the bloodshed, they’ll return to not caring. Until white workers are climbing over each other to commit class-suicide on behalf of revolution, I’ll have little reason to value their solidarity.
I already pointed out that inflation, the value of the dollar, compared to 2019 is due to pandemics slowing shipping down, you literally had to pay for more labor for the same amount of goods shipped --> increased costs of goods.
And this explains the persistence of inflation?
Sanctions also increase shipping costs --> increased costs of goods.
We’ll come back to this!
The bulk of American workers are getting wealthier, thus inflation for even things like apples and watermelon, because there are more people who will spend that money
The bulk? Real wages have been flat for quite some time, but you handwaved this away by everyone having dual incomes because women entered the labor force (and women now have to have two jobs in the nuclear family). Yet, that doesn’t actually resolve the problem! All you have done is doubled the flat wages, you haven’t actually shown anyone getting “wealthier”.
So. We aren’t seeing higher wages and savings are at near record lows. Where is inflation coming from?
Savings rate propaganda induced by bourgeois media promotes Economistic organizing, again 6 figure workers spending their full monthly paycheck, whether to rents, social security and retirement funds (savings but not called savings), student/mortgage/consumer loans (others’ savings), gambling/gatcha/collecting, “investing” in bubbles (housing, crypto, Tesla stock, “retail” investment has been growing ala “roaring 20s”), or doordash for every meal does not mean these workers are going to be any more interested in proletarian revolution.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 15.5% of households earn between $100,000 and $150,000 annually.
You are not describing the white workers I interact with in my factory, except maybe people in management.
Inflation rates in the US have never been more stable than the last 3 decades.
Okay, and then inflation spiked in the last few years.
Yes, pandemic supply chain disruptions which I don’t dispute, but like you already acknowledged it’s also because of the sanctions regime now backfiring onto the imperial core. That’s not a small thing! In previous decades the US could impose sanctions on its foes without paying any price, but now those sanctions are hurting the value of USD because trade in dollars is becoming more expensive and because the sanctions regime is literally forcing the global economy to shift away! And the sanctions, which once weakened US enemies, are now unable to slow Russia’s economy down. This only accelerates the shift away from dollars.
The higher interest rates (I’ll grant, they could be higher!) are an attempt to claw back the money supply, but all it is doing is putting even more pressure on the global South as they are forced to pay those higher interest rates on their loans. As a result we’ve seen coups and massive protest movements in Africa, a pink tide in Latin America, and the high interest rate environment is itself pushing countries away from USD lending and creating fertile ground for lending from other banks in other currencies.
The low inflation was geopolitical when it was stable over the last three decades, and the higher inflation is geopolitical now.
Interest rates are still historically low.
Actually, the last time they were this high was right before the '08 financial crash. Makes you go hmm…
Yes, they used to be much higher before 2000, but I think you’re underestimating how bad even these modest rates are for USD.
I still contend that these interest rates are going to force countries to move away from taking loans in USD and is already putting incredible political pressure on countries with existing loans in USD (most recently, see what’s going on in Kenya). This, in turn, will push the global economy ever further away from exchange in dollars and towards economic alliances like BRICS.
So it’s a bourgeois humanist position, without a hint of Marxism, and covering the true nature of Zionism and US labor’s role in occupation and genocide? Color me surprised, this is nothing to celebrate, we’ve seen it before:
Fair. It’s only the locals that are actually calling this genocide and calling Zionism a settler-colonial project and calling for BDS.
They’re great and should be recognized! The AFL-CIA remains embedded with the State Department, though.
This must have been said during every US involved war ever.
Has a US service-member ever lit themselves on fire before?
Until white workers are climbing over each other to commit class-suicide on behalf of revolution, I’ll have little reason to value their solidarity.
I understand and sympathize with your pessimism.
I, for one, don’t need the streets to already be running red to have at least a little revolutionary optimism.
Wages have not significantly dropped. Staying in the $23 dollar range since the 70s including the tens of millions of immigrants since then + women working more and more (and men working less) and wages are still the same? What does that mean overall? As the white male workforce aged and retired, more white men were given high wage jobs that are nearly equivalent to 2 median incomes (like missile engineering) and women and POC took the old jobs (productive factory, shipping, teaching, nursing). Incomes for Americans overall stayed consistent. On a global level $20 dollars an hour is humongous! Cost of living is actually not the cause of these wages, as most Proletarian global South cities are just as expensive as American ones and some are more expensive than NYC. Mexico, Canada, and the US have a merged market due to NAFTA, but only dead labor can travel freely, living labor is blocked by the border. What does this create? A free trade zone where workers doing the same work make $3 one one side of a deadly border, and $20 on the other. Why should we expect that US workers should be getting $25 by the 90s, $35 by now? Maintaining wealth while costs of much of personal consumption is actually dropping in real dollars (compare Nintendo consoles or appliances to the 90s). In the graph you show wages were the lowest in the 90s, where was this debourging then? The fact is that if white men were able to continue segregating women and POC, average wages still would have climbed.
But there is also the factor that average wage is being held down by immigrants, POC, and women (particularly immigrant women POC). Median white male wages have stagnated since the 70s, but the stratification is predominantly above the median, as in the rich got richer while the poor stayed the same.
The problem with centering on wages like this is that US wages have maintained global dominance while even more are getting absurd incomes. Just because tech workers are so rich does not mean GM workers have suddenly become exploited.
Again CoL is fairly comparable globally, US wages are rich everywhere, and US minimum wage is wealthier than most petty boojies in the global south, which is why they are willing to pack up and move here.
The position of US workers is high, them getting knocked off their pedestal will look a lot more drastic than this, like for instance minimum wage getting outlawed or the border blowing wide open (good tbh), or perhaps anti-peonage laws getting ripped away. Then I’d be concerned with them, but likely more concerned of them if the movement is not already approaching statehood ala (Independent Oglala Nation, Neo-Zapatistas, Panther Oakland).
The median wage of white men dropping because white women are working now does not upset me, and I would not run to white men and tell them they should be angry their monopoly on strong wages is ending. This however doesn’t solve that USians in aggregate have a monopoly on high wages (as is the case of Imperialism). And if we look at that chart, let’s say it dropped from 50k to 40k, this is not total compensation and benefits have increased since the 70s as the government props up housing speculation as a rule, retirement funds are growing in the stock market, and healthcare benefits are high. The real total compensation position of white men has not drastically changed since the 70s.
This also ignores that over half of US labor is genuinely unproductive white-collar work. 16% of jobs are factory work, then there is shipping work, and food producing work. I would consider people going from overpaid factory workers to white-collar work a bourgeois-ifying transition (have you seen the noise of this so-called intelligentsia on online?). Graph ends in 2000 but apparently it is up to 62% in 2022.
Wages have not significantly dropped. Staying in the $23 dollar range since the 70s including the tens of millions of immigrants since then + women working more and more (and men working less) and wages are still the same? What does that mean overall?
Wages haven’t really gone up either, which means it doesn’t explain inflation.
Wages only ever lag inflation. Wages rise in response to inflation, as workers are confronted by rising prices demand higher wages. Even bourgeoisified workers do this, because they’ve grown accustomed to their comfortable bourgeois lifestyle and demand wages that can sustain it. Blaming the inflation on wages is an obfuscation being pushed by bourgeois economists to hide the inflation caused by price gouging and monopolization and speculative bubbles and the geopolitics of dedollarization.
Maintaining wealth while costs of much of personal consumption is actually dropping in real dollars (compare Nintendo consoles or appliances to the 90s). In the graph you show wages were the lowest in the 90s, where was this debourging then? The fact is that if white men were able to continue segregating women and POC, average wages still would have climbed.
From 2005 to 2021, nominal wages went from $20/hr to $30/hr - a 50% increase.
From 2006 to 2021, nominal rents went from $694/mo to $1,191/mo - a 72% increase.
Wage inflation has fallen behind rent inflation. While the costs of Nintendos have fallen, the costs of having a roof over your head has risen. This bourgeois economist obfuscation creates an accounting trick that hides inflation as it is experienced by the worker, because bourgeois economists can hide unaffordable rent by telling workers “let them eat Nintendos!”
Inflation in other categories (food, home prices, etc) mostly matches wage inflation, but we see that renters specifically are falling behind. This actually creates a useful cleave to separate beourgeoisified workers from American proletarians, those who own property are bourgeoisified by their property investments and those who rent it are debourgeoisified by tenant exploitation.
Bourgeoisification does not come from personal consumption, it’s an economic relationship that comes from property.
And if we look at that chart, let’s say it dropped from 50k to 40k, this is not total compensation and benefits have increased since the 70s as the government props up housing speculation as a rule, retirement funds are growing in the stock market, and healthcare benefits are high. The real total compensation position of white men has not drastically changed since the 70s.
Healthcare costs in the US are outrageous, including them will just skew your data set. You have a good point, though, that bourgeoisified workers in the US benefit from their retirement funds and property speculation, and that’s another useful cleave between who has revolutionary potential and who is prone to reaction. If someone has a 401K or owns land, they’re not to be relied upon for revolutionary action.
And would you look at that, in 2022 about 42% of American households had $10K or less in retirement accounts.
I think it’s useful to pay attention to debourgeoisification and I think this process is only going to accelerate as the geopolitical situation worsens for the empire. Yes, white US workers are paid very highly compared to the rest of the world and compared to non-white workers. Yes, “standard of living” is a cruel obfuscation of the fact that white US workers live better livesbecause they have been bourgeoisified. Yet even still, while being paid highly and having cheap Nintendos they’re also being charged highly for the essentials of life, rendering their higher wages just another source of profit for businesses and investors to reap.
This also ignores that over half of US labor is genuinely unproductive white-collar work. 16% of jobs are factory work, then there is shipping work, and food producing work. I would consider people going from overpaid factory workers to white-collar work a bourgeois-ifying transition. Graph ends in 2000 but apparently it is up to 62% in 2022.
I think it’s more useful to look at who owns property and who owns investments, rather than specific job type. I doubt you’d say a factory worker that becomes a call center worker is in a particularly bourgeoisifying position.
The bourgeoisified workforce would, in my estimation, be somewhere between that 42% that have enough in retirement savings to the 65% that owns their own home. Either a very large minority or a solid majority. It will be important to watch these trends going forward, because if we have another housing crash or stock crash those numbers could plummet again like they did after 2008.
That’s not necessarily good, bourgeoisified workers are prone to reaction when they’re hurting, but it’s something to keep an eye on.
I doubt you’d say a factory worker that becomes a call center worker is in a particularly bourgeoisifying position.
Much of our disagreement stems from the definition of petty Bourgeoisie (which is actually many different property relations).
Going from factory to call center is being distanced from the MOP. More and more Americans are being distanced from the MOP (moreso as it leaves the country). This means that these wages are coming from someone else’s proximity to the MOP as surplus value producers. This is a more intensely Bourgeois position (Bourgeois != Capitalist or productive property owners). Workers consuming surplus-value from other workers beyond their aggregate output (so we don’t count out unproductive work that directly aids productive work) are not exploited, and are Semi-proletarian in character. The Semi-Proletariat and Petty Bourgeoisie form the “middle classes”. While America has grown simultaneously to moving MOP outside of the borders, this means that the US population as a whole including the workforce is becoming “middle class” between the global south and the Imperialist Bourgeoisie (referred to by Putin as the “golden billion”). Moving away from laboring with the MOP but keeping the same wages is a move closer to the Bourgeoisie. Lenin and Mao both referred to teachers as petty Bourgeois even though there is no productive MOP involved, this is because they are paid with someone else’s labor to facilitate Bourgeois rule. Look at the Middle Class in Britain paper I posted in the thread.
The US absorbs more value than it produces, there is inflation if it does not consume it all at once (savings are a symptom of this). If anything is leftover, inflation. Which leads once again to the problem of Semi-proles valuing land speculation. Not all want to buy an inflating home, but the majority of them do, and this causes the rest to face that inflation through renting, or worse, buy into that system themselves to keep up. The problem is every union pension and retirement fund is speculating on that same system. Caught in the contradiction, the US workforce is reinforcing the settler land regime! Simple Economistic demands further reinforce that problem!
This is why housing/asset inflation is higher than CPI. Economism is always a dead end within an Imperialist economy.
This cycle has been in existence in this exact form since WW2, relative sizes and shares of the Imperial loot are changing but not qualitatively. Just because it crashes doesn’t mean it’s created qualitatively different class consciousness, because 99% of US workers don’t even acknowledge the existence of Labor Aristocracy.
Prices and Wages are products of class struggles. You are correct to point out that there are geo-political factors but then again, how many US workers are actively Russophobes, Sinophobes, and Zionists, the vast majority?
The bottom fifth of US workers have the most potential for committing class suicide, rather than organize them around keeping up with the top 4/5ths, we need to point out to them that those demands are a dead end and can only lead to a shuffling around of who is in the bottom. Ending the colonial system through force is our only option. This is good though, since that bottom fifth represents most food workers and shipping workers, this means they are in position to starve out the fascist bastion and defend the Nat Lib struggles who will be seizing territory from the US. I want you to know that we are much agreement about the potential of the bottom of US workers, what I want to get away from is copium that this segment is growing, it’s simply just not the case. Revolution will come from the minority of the minority. Don’t fear, the US is selling us its noose.
I have two problems with this definition of “bourgeois.”
The first and most obvious is that it renders children and disabled people who can’t do “productive” work as bourgeois. As if the fact that they can’t produce commodities makes them bourgeois, and thus prone to reaction. As if the young and the disabled haven’t been at the forefront of every single movement against capitalism and imperialism and oppression and bigotry. You have to reconcile the existence of people like Helen Keller, who produced no commodities and had no inputs on production, as somehow bourgeois and reactionary by her very inability to be productive under capitalism. Or did being an author make her productive in your world view? Is that all it takes? Look at this conversation - we’re all authors now!
The second and more insidious is how you seem to consider customer-facing work as unproductive. What? Their job is to act as facilitators for exchange of commodities and as teachers for the proper utilization of those commodities after purchase to prevent returns. That’s productive! Imagine a call center worker that helps connect someone with a technitian to fix a software issue, that’s literally an act in the chain of production. They are as much producers of surplus as every other facilitator of exchange and customer-facing worker, from truckers to longshoremen to cashiers. They produce value, even if they aren’t literally manufacturing widgets in the sparks and steam factory.
The bourgeoisie are the owners of capital. They’re the investors, the proprietors, and the shareholders.
In what world is someone in a call center sweatshop bourgeois?
This cycle has been in existence in this exact form since WW2, relative sizes and shares of the Imperial loot are changing but not qualitatively. Just because it crashes doesn’t mean it’s created qualitatively different class consciousness, because 99% of US workers don’t even acknowledge the existence of Labor Aristocracy.
The transformation of quantitative change into qualitative change has to occur eventually, there are inflection points and we need to be paying attention identify them.
Is it when the streets already run red with the blood of martyrs? Or can it happen at any point before that, when people are awakening to class consciousness and internationalism and settler-colonialism and imperialism? Never in my life have I seen so many Americans turn on Israel. Something is happening and I wish you weren’t too pessimistic to see it.
The first and most obvious is that it renders children and disabled people who can’t do “productive” work as bourgeois.
Those that can’t work are a strata of the lumpen-proletariat, what separates them is not having access to legal income and consumption (outside of social democracy crumbs). Disabled proletarians working unproductive roles still form an aggregate worker alongside their peers. Nothing in my statement disregards such individuals. Hellen Keller was a professional writer and lecturer, paid for her products, she was petty bourgeois.
The second and more insidious is how you seem to consider customer-facing work as unproductive.
Unproductive labor is all such labor that does not create surplus-value, but helps preserve or appropriate it. Marx:
Since the direct purpose and the actual product of capitalist production is surplus value, only such labour is productive, and only such an exerter of labour capacity is a productive worker, as directly produces surplus value. Hence only such labour is productive as is consumed directly in the production process for the purpose of valorising capital.
Call centers do not create surplus-value, they only help realize surplus-value, this is why they are unproductive. This is not a moral assessment, and it does not mean unproductive workers can’t be exploited. Productive and Unproductive workers form an abstract Aggregate or Combined Laborer which must produce surplus-value to be exploited. If unproductive labor pool is paid more than productive labor pool, then there must be super-profits being realized, such is the case of the Aggregate US Worker and the global proletariat. Such a relationship creates Semi-Proletarians and is the start of a Labor Aristocracy or bourgeois-proletariat.
The bourgeoisie are the owners of capital. They’re the investors, the proprietors, and the shareholders.
In what world is someone in a call center sweatshop bourgeois?
I didn’t call them bourgeois, I said they are moving closer to the bourgeoisie than they are the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat, it’s a function of direction. Those that manage bourgeois apparatuses in exchange for wages are also petty-bourgeois. They work directly towards maintaining Bourgeois Rule as a system. I didn’t make this definition up. Nobody would ever deny that there are strata of workers wealthier than members of the bourgeoisie, this is due to decaying and rising strata as Capitalism develops.
Never in my life have I seen so many Americans turn on Israel.
I’m sure as much was said about the Apartheid Regime. Wake me when they turn on themselves.
[2.10] Combating Common Wishful Thinking on the White Working Class
It is tempting to look for the slightest tinge of proletarian class interest
among that section of the Amerikan nation (the white working class) that
participates in production and in the circulation of commodities, as well
as in the realization of the social surplus value through the purchasing of
commodities for their own consumption.
It is tempting to look for the possibilities of an irreversible, precipitous
decline in the economic status of certain strata in the vast Amerikan settler
formation. The beleaguered, exploited proletariat residing in the internal
colonies of Amerika could benefit from a little help, or at least neutrality, from the middle classes—the petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy—during the insurrection/civil war and the preparatory years.
Settler radicals (meaning radicals descended from Europeans settling North
Amerika)—from the Trots to some Maoists—have long refused to face the
fact that the labor aristocracy is not only not a neutral force, but, if class interests rest on economic interests, not even mildly exploited. To paraphrase
Lenin: the petty-bourgeois revolutionaries take the conditions for their own
liberation to be the universal demands of mankind.
In terms of party-building this kind of thinking sometimes boils down to
promoting left-economist notions of immediate gratification, such as, “Nuke
war tomorrow? Oh shit, where do I sign up?” Such an understanding avoids
the international class analysis necessary to best promote revolution.
To truly take the stand of the international proletariat means to put our
analysis in the spot where the oppressed exist: with no choices available
but further oppression—or rebellion. We can strive to do this even during the periods when the masses actually standing in that spot have not yet realized their strength. For a revolutionary hanging by his/her thumbs in a cold Peruvian prison waiting for the flames to hit, Amerika must look like one huge, undifferentiated mass of class enemies.
That’s from the outside of this toilet. Inside it, we must make the differentiation and coldly separate friend from foe. The friends will throw themselves
into the flames to annihilate the flame-throwers. The foes will stand a little
distance apart at the last moment. As groups, this will be decided, in the
final analysis, by the historical group interest.
In the beginning, we decide what groups are worth our efforts building for
those decisive moments. If there is even a faint hope that the Amerikan
“working class” is waiting in the wings for revolution, then it would make
sense to organize for the demands of this group. (MIM seeks to organize
amongst all groups at all times, but it only organizes for the demands of the
oppressed, not the oppressors.)
MIM holds that, at the present, the majority of white workers in
this country—skilled workers, trade unionists, paper-pushers,
etc.—do not represent a revolutionary class. They do not create
surplus value as much as reapportion the surplus which results
from superexploitation of the Third World and oppressed internal nations. They are not prepared to abandon bourgeois
aspirations and mainly high-paying jobs to drop everything for
the good of the international proletariat.(1)
“Ah ha!” exclaims the desperately vacillating nature of the petty-bourgeois
revolutionary. “Just wait until they lose those high-paying jobs and become
prepared to abandon their bourgeois aspirations! Then they shall be friends!”
The cold-hearted Maoist replies, “Dream on, by that point what’s left of
them shall still be white-collar fascists defending a starving fortress Amerika
and firing bullets at Third World Maoist armies, while eating old Spam and
lining up to perish for the ‘right’ of their toxic-mutated children to ‘live free
or die!’”
These settlers are perfectly willing to fight and die for the continued ability
of their group to experience the taste of that rich and famous, completely
corrupted, seemingly immortal lifestyle.
An article by Lenin, who died before neocolonialism really pumped up the
imperialist alliances of the labor aristocracy and expanded the “shift in class
relations,” still says it well:
The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the
appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country
in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden
or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of
wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the
Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a larger body of personal servants and
workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods: all the main arterial
industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and semimanufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa… We
have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of
Western states, a European federation of Great Powers which,
so far from forwarding the cause of world civilization, might
introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of
advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries
of agriculture and manufacture but kept in the performance of
personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new
financial aristocracy.(2)
The above quote was from Hobson, a “social-liberal" whom Lenin found
useful to quote, lest he be disbelieved. To would-be communist organizers
of the labor aristocracy, Lenin exclaimed: “At the present time, you are
fawning on the opportunists, who are alien to the proletariat as a class,
who are the servants, the agents of the bourgeoisie and the vehicles of its
influence, and unless the labor movement rids itself of them, it will remain
a bourgeois labor movement."(3)
Most white workers in this country are not prepared to ditch bourgeois aspirations and high-paying jobs to drop everything for the
good of the international proletariat.
Notes:
What is MIM pamphlet p. 8.
I.V. Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Moscow Progress Publishers, 1979, p. 9.
Inflation is mostly due to higher wages, and savings. Savings are reinvested by banks and turned into new constant and variable capital (hiring more workers). It can be turned into new consumption (like video games, social media, more advertising). It can be turned into student loans, and mortgages (if there is a surplus of money-capital all of these things will get more expensive relative the the unit of money), and “gentrification” re-developments or new suburban developments. Your savings become a smaller share of the MOP because they got invested elsewhere and more things were made or labor paid because of it! Simultaneously capital will be exported, mostly to China, where it is used to decrease the prices of expensive goods like video game consoles and microwaves (which is why they have gotten cheaper since the 80s/90s). The increase in the prices of other goods are due to the increases of incomes whether directly or indirectly through cheaper living and therefore savings, this causes the propertied classes to raise prices to capture these excess monies in savings so they can maintain their relative share of ownership. The bourgeoisie does not want dollars sitting around, they want them put into motion so they can be accumulated. This means increased consumption, and consumption remains high. USians consume way more than the global south citizens do.
Though again, buying lots of things and not saving money doesn’t mean your life is actually getting worse! The “60 percent of USians are paycheck to paycheck” talking point in media obfuscates that the median US worker makes hundreds of thousands a year, that 60% must include people doing better than the median worker.
All that said, family incomes have not changed beyond historical levels for the bottom 20%, all other brackets are growing, and there are more families.
The recent “labor upsurge” was pandemic related, just as inflation was largely pandemic related due to transportation delays and more spending per-worker on minimal safety precautions (with some level of “greed-flation” but again that’s just opportunism on behalf of the bourgs).
None of this really effects US workers, besides the tech sector and the housing bubble (this means less workers able to speculate on land) which was being supplied by Counter-revolutionary Russian Bourgs who parked their money in the US for these “industries”. This does explain some of the attention TikTok is getting as US-based companies are losing their technology monopolies. However, conditions for Imperialism are still better than when the USSR existed. Capital exports of specific commodities are decreased when that specific commodity making capital is exported, but it need not be existing machines. GM mostly built new machines in their transition to Mexico and the US factories make largely high end cars and trucks now, while Mexicans make the lower end vehicles which are sold to US GM workers lol. Surplus-Capital either finds new industries or expands elsewhere, but this could easily be to an underdeveloped sector in an Imperialist ally (such as Germany, South Korea). You’re right that if not enough surplus-capital finds a home, that the value of dollars goes down, this is effected by dollar demand but also capital exports can take the form of bombs, ultimately the destruction of capital, which allows for demand to be re-established. New sources of consumption counter-balance inflation, essentially, which is why the US is the least susceptible state to inflation.
This is due to what I said above, that people are saving money, so loans get more expensive because there is a surplus of capital to be turned into loans (they make bigger loans because they can find people to take them). This makes college and housing more expensive. Local landlord regimes (city-government “deep states”) subsidize development to attract higher wage sectors like tech so they can realize more real-estate capital in the form of land-values and rents. So you’re right that wage differentiation has something to do with cost increases, but again 4/5th of USian incomes are increasing yoy, overall the bulk is on the upswing. You must be reading too much Hudson to think that the dollar system itself is the source of inflation, no, it’s actually “unequal exchange” and the increased wages it brings.
The petty-bourgeoisie need not actually own productive assets, this is an overly mechanical analysis of petty bourg classes. Lenin and Mao referred to academics, teachers, doctors, and nurses to be petty-bourgeoisie, see the source in my other comment on the Middle Classes in Britain. The petty-bourgeoisie is simply non-capitalists and non-proletarians converging into a “middle strata”.
To a certain extent, working hours struggles are progressive, to another extent, they are simply wage struggles hidden behind math. In an Imperial economy where wages are already built from stolen labor of the global proletariat, cutting hours in Imperialist states comes at the expense of the global proletariat, it’s ultimately reactionary organizing unless it doubles with demands of a shorter working day globally for all workers, i.e. proletarian internationalism.
We see this was not the case…
Where? Outside of the walk-outs of academics who some happened to be in the UAW, there hasn’t been any anti-Imperialist actions by US unions. They make statements but my dog could make just as valuable of a statement if she could write. Opportunist gonna opportunist, this isn’t a sign of anything lasting, if it was they’d be seizing land and handing them over to the Indigenous peoples as we speak. UAW would divest from weapons manufacturing and Israeli settlements. The academic protesters only jumped in when their students were getting beat up by pigs, again a valiant action, but ultimately has not progressed the struggle. The youth are always worth agitating but it’s important they can’t be lead by Opportunists in the union movement and academic circles. As seen Liberals also protest, doesn’t mean Liberals or union-locals have developed more class consciousness beyond white guilt for being in-Empire.
Nothing novel has occurred between this moment and the anti-Vietnam days besides much less whites caring because they successfully got the draft paused indefinitely. When union workers start destroying weapons manufacturing equipment I’ll have to change my mind, but that seems to be far from where we are, and the “toughest actions” have been climbing (office, not factory) buildings and tagging them with paint.
“Savings savings savings” you say, and yet the rate of savings has been declining since the 60s and right now is on par with the period just before the 2008 financial crash. Savings are not an explanation for the inflation we are seeing and this is another contradiction to your claims: if savings are a source of inflation, and savings are down, where is the inflation coming from? Is it only coming from wage increases like is being claimed by bourgeois economists? I’m skeptical, and so I’m hypothesizing that the inflation is geopolitical.
And yet, the state is grappling with inflation despite being the least susceptible state to inflation. Does this not indicate a change?
Do you think the bourgeois want a high interest rate environment? Do you think they want the global South to turn to other countries for loans?
One thing that stood out to me was the demands for an end to understaffing, which necessarily means hiring more people. It’s not quite internationalism, no, but it does benefit the internally colonized people who could gain employment instead of being forced to fill the ranks of the gig economy and reserve army of unemployed workers.
I will acknowledge the labor upsurge lacks enough international character. I’ll be watching for who starts to organize migrant temp workers first.
UAW International is calling for a ceasefire, a full list of unions who have signed on can be found here. I’m not overly impressed by their calls, they only call for Israelis to be released when they should be calling for a hostage exchange and acknowledge that the Zionists have been taking Palestinians hostage by the thousands into detention centers, but they aren’t just silently supporting Israel either.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union recently shut down the Port of Oakland to prevent ships carrying weapons bound for Israel from leaving the docks. In fact, the ILWU has a long history of being interested in and supportive of Palestinian liberation going back decades because of their internationalist character that was cultivated during the anti-apartheid struggle against South Africa.
It’s not just academics. The labor upsurge is gaining a political character. Something is happening.
I’ll cheer when that happens, and you’re right to point out the lacking radicalism in US unions. Yet, you’re underestimating the importance of public demonstration and should recognize that even non-destructive acts still act as propaganda for further radical action. Tagging a building with paint can be a precursor to tagging it with… something else.
I don’t share your pessimism for the white US working class. I think we’re on the brink of a change and these are all signs.
We’ll see.
I already pointed out that inflation, the value of the dollar, compared to 2019 is due to pandemics slowing shipping down, you literally had to pay for more labor for the same amount of goods shipped --> increased costs of goods. Sanctions also increase shipping costs --> increased costs of goods. The bulk of American workers are getting wealthier, thus inflation for even things like apples and watermelon, because there are more people who will spend that money. The struggle between US workers and US petty bourgs over who gets a bigger share of Imperialism does nothing to advance Communism. Savings rate propaganda induced by bourgeois media promotes Economistic organizing, again 6 figure workers spending their full monthly paycheck, whether to rents, social security and retirement funds (savings but not called savings), student/mortgage/consumer loans (others’ savings), gambling/gatcha/collecting, “investing” in bubbles (housing, crypto, Tesla stock, “retail” investment has been growing ala “roaring 20s”), or doordash for every meal does not mean these workers are going to be any more interested in proletarian revolution.
Inflation rates in the US have never been more stable than the last 3 decades.
Interest rates are still historically low. Many loans were forgiven so the recent rise in interest rates seeks to slow down borrowing that the pandemic induced to absorb stimmy checks. It’s all about inducing circulation or slowing it down when the bourgs want to.
This is not a new demand, it’s consistent with Imperialist union activity historically. This type of reform still works on behalf of Imperialism to delay national liberation, it’s certainly a contradiction we intend to exploit where available to us, though this requires we have an even stronger anti-Colonial line since making more oppressed nation bourgs adds troubling revisionisms to the movement.
So it’s a bourgeois humanist position, without a hint of Marxism, and covering the true nature of Zionism and US labor’s role in occupation and genocide? Color me surprised, this is nothing to celebrate, we’ve seen it before:
Don’t downplay the role of conditional solidarity in shaping the demands of a Decolonization struggle. The form of the ANC now can’t be separated from the way in which Apartheid “ended” (who owns the land and bread?). The same goes for these “anti-Zionist”-but-nowhere-anti-Zionist gestures that push blame on the Resistance and deny the reality of settler-Colonialism in Palestine.
This must have been said during every US involved war ever. I think such acts result because such bloodshed exists, before the bloodshed, none of them cared. After the bloodshed, they’ll return to not caring. Until white workers are climbing over each other to commit class-suicide on behalf of revolution, I’ll have little reason to value their solidarity.
And this explains the persistence of inflation?
We’ll come back to this!
The bulk? Real wages have been flat for quite some time, but you handwaved this away by everyone having dual incomes because women entered the labor force (and women now have to have two jobs in the nuclear family). Yet, that doesn’t actually resolve the problem! All you have done is doubled the flat wages, you haven’t actually shown anyone getting “wealthier”.
So. We aren’t seeing higher wages and savings are at near record lows. Where is inflation coming from?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 15.5% of households earn between $100,000 and $150,000 annually.
You are not describing the white workers I interact with in my factory, except maybe people in management.
Okay, and then inflation spiked in the last few years.
Yes, pandemic supply chain disruptions which I don’t dispute, but like you already acknowledged it’s also because of the sanctions regime now backfiring onto the imperial core. That’s not a small thing! In previous decades the US could impose sanctions on its foes without paying any price, but now those sanctions are hurting the value of USD because trade in dollars is becoming more expensive and because the sanctions regime is literally forcing the global economy to shift away! And the sanctions, which once weakened US enemies, are now unable to slow Russia’s economy down. This only accelerates the shift away from dollars.
The higher interest rates (I’ll grant, they could be higher!) are an attempt to claw back the money supply, but all it is doing is putting even more pressure on the global South as they are forced to pay those higher interest rates on their loans. As a result we’ve seen coups and massive protest movements in Africa, a pink tide in Latin America, and the high interest rate environment is itself pushing countries away from USD lending and creating fertile ground for lending from other banks in other currencies.
The low inflation was geopolitical when it was stable over the last three decades, and the higher inflation is geopolitical now.
Actually, the last time they were this high was right before the '08 financial crash. Makes you go hmm…
Yes, they used to be much higher before 2000, but I think you’re underestimating how bad even these modest rates are for USD.
I still contend that these interest rates are going to force countries to move away from taking loans in USD and is already putting incredible political pressure on countries with existing loans in USD (most recently, see what’s going on in Kenya). This, in turn, will push the global economy ever further away from exchange in dollars and towards economic alliances like BRICS.
Fair. It’s only the locals that are actually calling this genocide and calling Zionism a settler-colonial project and calling for BDS.
They’re great and should be recognized! The AFL-CIA remains embedded with the State Department, though.
Has a US service-member ever lit themselves on fire before?
I understand and sympathize with your pessimism.
I, for one, don’t need the streets to already be running red to have at least a little revolutionary optimism.
Wages have not significantly dropped. Staying in the $23 dollar range since the 70s including the tens of millions of immigrants since then + women working more and more (and men working less) and wages are still the same? What does that mean overall? As the white male workforce aged and retired, more white men were given high wage jobs that are nearly equivalent to 2 median incomes (like missile engineering) and women and POC took the old jobs (productive factory, shipping, teaching, nursing). Incomes for Americans overall stayed consistent. On a global level $20 dollars an hour is humongous! Cost of living is actually not the cause of these wages, as most Proletarian global South cities are just as expensive as American ones and some are more expensive than NYC. Mexico, Canada, and the US have a merged market due to NAFTA, but only dead labor can travel freely, living labor is blocked by the border. What does this create? A free trade zone where workers doing the same work make $3 one one side of a deadly border, and $20 on the other. Why should we expect that US workers should be getting $25 by the 90s, $35 by now? Maintaining wealth while costs of much of personal consumption is actually dropping in real dollars (compare Nintendo consoles or appliances to the 90s). In the graph you show wages were the lowest in the 90s, where was this debourging then? The fact is that if white men were able to continue segregating women and POC, average wages still would have climbed.
But there is also the factor that average wage is being held down by immigrants, POC, and women (particularly immigrant women POC). Median white male wages have stagnated since the 70s, but the stratification is predominantly above the median, as in the rich got richer while the poor stayed the same.
The problem with centering on wages like this is that US wages have maintained global dominance while even more are getting absurd incomes. Just because tech workers are so rich does not mean GM workers have suddenly become exploited.
Again CoL is fairly comparable globally, US wages are rich everywhere, and US minimum wage is wealthier than most petty boojies in the global south, which is why they are willing to pack up and move here.
The position of US workers is high, them getting knocked off their pedestal will look a lot more drastic than this, like for instance minimum wage getting outlawed or the border blowing wide open (good tbh), or perhaps anti-peonage laws getting ripped away. Then I’d be concerned with them, but likely more concerned of them if the movement is not already approaching statehood ala (Independent Oglala Nation, Neo-Zapatistas, Panther Oakland).
The median wage of white men dropping because white women are working now does not upset me, and I would not run to white men and tell them they should be angry their monopoly on strong wages is ending. This however doesn’t solve that USians in aggregate have a monopoly on high wages (as is the case of Imperialism). And if we look at that chart, let’s say it dropped from 50k to 40k, this is not total compensation and benefits have increased since the 70s as the government props up housing speculation as a rule, retirement funds are growing in the stock market, and healthcare benefits are high. The real total compensation position of white men has not drastically changed since the 70s.
This also ignores that over half of US labor is genuinely unproductive white-collar work. 16% of jobs are factory work, then there is shipping work, and food producing work. I would consider people going from overpaid factory workers to white-collar work a bourgeois-ifying transition (have you seen the noise of this so-called intelligentsia on online?). Graph ends in 2000 but apparently it is up to 62% in 2022.
Wages haven’t really gone up either, which means it doesn’t explain inflation.
Wages only ever lag inflation. Wages rise in response to inflation, as workers are confronted by rising prices demand higher wages. Even bourgeoisified workers do this, because they’ve grown accustomed to their comfortable bourgeois lifestyle and demand wages that can sustain it. Blaming the inflation on wages is an obfuscation being pushed by bourgeois economists to hide the inflation caused by price gouging and monopolization and speculative bubbles and the geopolitics of dedollarization.
From 2005 to 2021, nominal wages went from $20/hr to $30/hr - a 50% increase.
From 2006 to 2021, nominal rents went from $694/mo to $1,191/mo - a 72% increase.
Wage inflation has fallen behind rent inflation. While the costs of Nintendos have fallen, the costs of having a roof over your head has risen. This bourgeois economist obfuscation creates an accounting trick that hides inflation as it is experienced by the worker, because bourgeois economists can hide unaffordable rent by telling workers “let them eat Nintendos!”
Inflation in other categories (food, home prices, etc) mostly matches wage inflation, but we see that renters specifically are falling behind. This actually creates a useful cleave to separate beourgeoisified workers from American proletarians, those who own property are bourgeoisified by their property investments and those who rent it are debourgeoisified by tenant exploitation.
Bourgeoisification does not come from personal consumption, it’s an economic relationship that comes from property.
Healthcare costs in the US are outrageous, including them will just skew your data set. You have a good point, though, that bourgeoisified workers in the US benefit from their retirement funds and property speculation, and that’s another useful cleave between who has revolutionary potential and who is prone to reaction. If someone has a 401K or owns land, they’re not to be relied upon for revolutionary action.
And would you look at that, in 2022 about 42% of American households had $10K or less in retirement accounts.
I think it’s useful to pay attention to debourgeoisification and I think this process is only going to accelerate as the geopolitical situation worsens for the empire. Yes, white US workers are paid very highly compared to the rest of the world and compared to non-white workers. Yes, “standard of living” is a cruel obfuscation of the fact that white US workers live better lives because they have been bourgeoisified. Yet even still, while being paid highly and having cheap Nintendos they’re also being charged highly for the essentials of life, rendering their higher wages just another source of profit for businesses and investors to reap.
I think it’s more useful to look at who owns property and who owns investments, rather than specific job type. I doubt you’d say a factory worker that becomes a call center worker is in a particularly bourgeoisifying position.
The bourgeoisified workforce would, in my estimation, be somewhere between that 42% that have enough in retirement savings to the 65% that owns their own home. Either a very large minority or a solid majority. It will be important to watch these trends going forward, because if we have another housing crash or stock crash those numbers could plummet again like they did after 2008.
That’s not necessarily good, bourgeoisified workers are prone to reaction when they’re hurting, but it’s something to keep an eye on.
Much of our disagreement stems from the definition of petty Bourgeoisie (which is actually many different property relations).
Going from factory to call center is being distanced from the MOP. More and more Americans are being distanced from the MOP (moreso as it leaves the country). This means that these wages are coming from someone else’s proximity to the MOP as surplus value producers. This is a more intensely Bourgeois position (Bourgeois != Capitalist or productive property owners). Workers consuming surplus-value from other workers beyond their aggregate output (so we don’t count out unproductive work that directly aids productive work) are not exploited, and are Semi-proletarian in character. The Semi-Proletariat and Petty Bourgeoisie form the “middle classes”. While America has grown simultaneously to moving MOP outside of the borders, this means that the US population as a whole including the workforce is becoming “middle class” between the global south and the Imperialist Bourgeoisie (referred to by Putin as the “golden billion”). Moving away from laboring with the MOP but keeping the same wages is a move closer to the Bourgeoisie. Lenin and Mao both referred to teachers as petty Bourgeois even though there is no productive MOP involved, this is because they are paid with someone else’s labor to facilitate Bourgeois rule. Look at the Middle Class in Britain paper I posted in the thread.
The US absorbs more value than it produces, there is inflation if it does not consume it all at once (savings are a symptom of this). If anything is leftover, inflation. Which leads once again to the problem of Semi-proles valuing land speculation. Not all want to buy an inflating home, but the majority of them do, and this causes the rest to face that inflation through renting, or worse, buy into that system themselves to keep up. The problem is every union pension and retirement fund is speculating on that same system. Caught in the contradiction, the US workforce is reinforcing the settler land regime! Simple Economistic demands further reinforce that problem!
This is why housing/asset inflation is higher than CPI. Economism is always a dead end within an Imperialist economy.
This cycle has been in existence in this exact form since WW2, relative sizes and shares of the Imperial loot are changing but not qualitatively. Just because it crashes doesn’t mean it’s created qualitatively different class consciousness, because 99% of US workers don’t even acknowledge the existence of Labor Aristocracy.
Prices and Wages are products of class struggles. You are correct to point out that there are geo-political factors but then again, how many US workers are actively Russophobes, Sinophobes, and Zionists, the vast majority?
The bottom fifth of US workers have the most potential for committing class suicide, rather than organize them around keeping up with the top 4/5ths, we need to point out to them that those demands are a dead end and can only lead to a shuffling around of who is in the bottom. Ending the colonial system through force is our only option. This is good though, since that bottom fifth represents most food workers and shipping workers, this means they are in position to starve out the fascist bastion and defend the Nat Lib struggles who will be seizing territory from the US. I want you to know that we are much agreement about the potential of the bottom of US workers, what I want to get away from is copium that this segment is growing, it’s simply just not the case. Revolution will come from the minority of the minority. Don’t fear, the US is selling us its noose.
I have two problems with this definition of “bourgeois.”
The first and most obvious is that it renders children and disabled people who can’t do “productive” work as bourgeois. As if the fact that they can’t produce commodities makes them bourgeois, and thus prone to reaction. As if the young and the disabled haven’t been at the forefront of every single movement against capitalism and imperialism and oppression and bigotry. You have to reconcile the existence of people like Helen Keller, who produced no commodities and had no inputs on production, as somehow bourgeois and reactionary by her very inability to be productive under capitalism. Or did being an author make her productive in your world view? Is that all it takes? Look at this conversation - we’re all authors now!
The second and more insidious is how you seem to consider customer-facing work as unproductive. What? Their job is to act as facilitators for exchange of commodities and as teachers for the proper utilization of those commodities after purchase to prevent returns. That’s productive! Imagine a call center worker that helps connect someone with a technitian to fix a software issue, that’s literally an act in the chain of production. They are as much producers of surplus as every other facilitator of exchange and customer-facing worker, from truckers to longshoremen to cashiers. They produce value, even if they aren’t literally manufacturing widgets in the sparks and steam factory.
The bourgeoisie are the owners of capital. They’re the investors, the proprietors, and the shareholders.
In what world is someone in a call center sweatshop bourgeois?
The transformation of quantitative change into qualitative change has to occur eventually, there are inflection points and we need to be paying attention identify them.
Is it when the streets already run red with the blood of martyrs? Or can it happen at any point before that, when people are awakening to class consciousness and internationalism and settler-colonialism and imperialism? Never in my life have I seen so many Americans turn on Israel. Something is happening and I wish you weren’t too pessimistic to see it.
Those that can’t work are a strata of the lumpen-proletariat, what separates them is not having access to legal income and consumption (outside of social democracy crumbs). Disabled proletarians working unproductive roles still form an aggregate worker alongside their peers. Nothing in my statement disregards such individuals. Hellen Keller was a professional writer and lecturer, paid for her products, she was petty bourgeois.
Unproductive labor is all such labor that does not create surplus-value, but helps preserve or appropriate it. Marx:
Call centers do not create surplus-value, they only help realize surplus-value, this is why they are unproductive. This is not a moral assessment, and it does not mean unproductive workers can’t be exploited. Productive and Unproductive workers form an abstract Aggregate or Combined Laborer which must produce surplus-value to be exploited. If unproductive labor pool is paid more than productive labor pool, then there must be super-profits being realized, such is the case of the Aggregate US Worker and the global proletariat. Such a relationship creates Semi-Proletarians and is the start of a Labor Aristocracy or bourgeois-proletariat.
I didn’t call them bourgeois, I said they are moving closer to the bourgeoisie than they are the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat, it’s a function of direction. Those that manage bourgeois apparatuses in exchange for wages are also petty-bourgeois. They work directly towards maintaining Bourgeois Rule as a system. I didn’t make this definition up. Nobody would ever deny that there are strata of workers wealthier than members of the bourgeoisie, this is due to decaying and rising strata as Capitalism develops.
I’m sure as much was said about the Apartheid Regime. Wake me when they turn on themselves.
From MIM Theory 1: