In a free-market, global capitalist economy, people will advance themselves as much as they can economically. Since uneven development is essentially an "iron law" of capitalism, there will always in the current system be pockets where some possess more than others. This "pockets" roughly correspond to nation states; thus, people in the developed industrialized countries-- due to the historical accumulation of capital there vis-a-vis colonialism and imperialism-- possess more resources overall. In addition, there are small pockets of extreme wealth within the third world, because the capitalist class is in the final analysis *global* and belongs to no one country or group of countries. Sattelites of capitalist expansion, due to the export of resource extraction ('resources' including cheap labor sources) and the necessary corporate bureaucrats to carry this out, also facilitate the existence of these 'pockets' within the third world.
Workers in the third world and workers in the first world share in common the fact that they must sell their labor power in order to survive. While they may make different wages and have access to more or less resources for consumption, the fact is that their MODE of acquiring capital is the same. (As opposed to owning a business, investing on the stock market, etc.) Economic standing & class cannot be determined by using the bourgeois methodology economic brackets (e.g., $0-10,000; $10,000-20,000; etc.). The primary determining factor is mode of relative mode of income. I.e., do you work by hourly wage? do you own property? do you make investments? do you run a business? and all the manifold combinations thereof.....
It is not the job of workers in the developed world to offer their jobs or portions of their salary to workers in the third world in order to "allay their guilt". Nor is it even feasible that third world workers swim across oceans and walk across land masses to demand that workers in the developed world turn over their houses, refrigerators, and other amenities. In order to affect real change in their lives, workers-- third world and 'first'-- can only struggle against the bourgeoisie in their own nation. Anything else simply translates into national chauvinism.
Best, David
In a message dated 8/9/2002 9:14:24 PM Eastern Standard Time, gcf at panix.com writes:
> It might help thought if moralization were set aside when
> thinking about exploitation. Collective guilt presents us
> with a difficulty in moral(ization) logic, but almost nobody
> balks at the idea that people may act economically in a
> collective manner, and possibly so as to exploit or take
> advantage of other people. As we know from analyses of
> racism and sexism, the exploiters or advantage-takers may
> do their thing unconsciously or even against their
> preferences.
>
> "Grown fat" may be excessive, but if the U.S. population uses
> 30% of the world's resources and consumes 30% of its production,
> while comprising 5% of its population, something's going on,
> one would think.
>
> -- Gordon
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