On Mon, 13 Jan 2003 08:28:06 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
writes:
> >Michael Pollak wrote:
> >
> >>[A conservative explains]
> >
> >Ooops, sorry, hadn't noticed you'd done that already.
> >
> >Brooks may be a conservative, but I'm afraid he's mostly right
> about
> >this argument. That Time poll, which has 39% of Americans either
> >thinking they're in the top 1% or will be someday, is just as
> >revealing as Brooks claims. It uncovers a fundamental fantasy about
>
> >American life. Even though we've got the most unequal distribution
> >of income in the rich world, the highest poverty levels, the
> >greatest persistence of low-wage pay, and only moderate levels of
> >mobility - that all doesn't matter. Most Americans just don't care.
>
> >You could recite the facts over & over and it won't make a dent in
> >that fundamental fantasy. I'll be damned if I can think what to do
> >about it.
> >
> >Doug
>
> The fact that "the top 1%" are "making incomes over $300,000 per
> year" while you are making only, say, $30,000 isn't in itself a
> reason enough for you to get mad as hell at the top 1%....unless you
>
> also know that the top 1% are making over $300,000 _because_ they
> exploit you and your fellow workers, _because_ the value that you
> produce have and will be making them richer, more powerful, more
> capable of exploiting and oppressing you further. Facts about
> income
> inequality are not that hard to come by even in the corporate mass
> media, not to mention the smaller liberal media. You can't find
> anything about exploitation (in the Marxist sense) of ordinary
> American workers in the corporate mass media, though (the smaller
> liberal media only faintly hint at it, once in a blue moon). If
> "exploitation" is mentioned _at all_, the word is invariably used in
>
> such a way that it only refers to super-exploitation of sweatshop
> workers in poor nations and other extreme cases. If anything, you,
> with your $30,000 income and bargain-hunting practice, will find
> yourself damned as among the chief exploiters of poor Third-World
> workers. Ideology turns the world upside down, with the exploited
> (American workers) portrayed as the exploiters, the exploiters
> (capitalists) portrayed as the "fortunate," the "hard-working," the
> "charitable," etc.
It should be noted though, that many Maoists seem to share the sort of analysis which portrays First World workers as being among the exploiters of workers in the Third World. Such an analysis is based upon Engels' notion of a "labor aristocracy" which the ruling class is able to buy off by giving them a cut in the surplus value that is generated through imperialist exploitation of workers in the colonies. Engels had used this concept in explaining the conservatism of British workers, as did Lenin, to explain why most of the social democratic parties of the Second International had so eagerly supported their respective governments during WW I.
Maoist groups like MIM (Maoist International Movement) and the Revolutionary Communist Party claim that a majority of American workers, mainly white workers, are now a days, members of the labor aristocracy, and thus benefit directly or indirectly from exploitation of the Third World. This sort of analysis BTW, in its own way, mirrors the analysis of 1950s American social scientists like Seymour Lipset or Daniel Bell, in explaining the relative conservatism of American workers.
Jim F.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Calendar of Events in Columbus:
> <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>
>
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