But this seems unsatisfactory to me. If all we can do is impose a schema of better off and worse off, where the metropolitan working class is underprivileged in comparison to the metropolitan elite, privileged in relation to the thrid world masses, then that is not a very good analytic tool. (No better, in fact than the comedy sketch Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett and John Cleese did for That Was The Week That Was nearly 50 yrs ago).
Pedantically speaking 'privileged' is wrong. It is not private law that creates social inequality, as under feudalism, but public law, equally applied, that allows social inequality through private property (in the means of production, to be precise).
Analytically, the way to go further than 'privilege is relative' is to shift the focus of investigation from the realm of consumption, and the distribution of goods there, to the realm of production and the distribution of its means among the social classes.
Not privilege, then, but exploitation is the category that will clarify what follows it, the unequal distribution of goods among the population.
Schematically, the income differences between the working class in the metropolitan countries, and those peripheral workers there, and in the underdeveloped world, are less decisive than those between the international working class and the world elite. The ruling class exploits the working class, but the working class does not exploit - i.e. live off the labour of - the impoverished masses. Income differences divide the international working class relatively, but they do not make their interests ultimately opposing.
It is only on the basis of the above analysis that you can say that the working class in the developed world *has a material interest* in opposing capitalism. If, as some argue, the metropolitan working class shares in the exploitation of the third world masses, then it has no interest in seeing capitalism overthrown, being amongst its recipients.
The subsidiary question is why the working class is not immediately aware of its exploitation, and therefore of its interest in overthrowing the system. But if it were, then capitalism would have been defeated long ago, and political agitation would be entirely superflous, as would all science if the appearance of things coincided with their essence.
John Thorton wrote:
"A job at UPS, as an insurance agent, or even at AutoZone looks fairly "privileged to those living on a reservation with no job prospects. "White privilege is quite real. The bubble is bigger than you seem to "suggest. Being on the edge of Chapter 7 does not exclude one. "If you think less than 35% of Americans are privileged from the "perspective of the bottom 35% you are quite mistaken. "If you think less than 35% of Americans are privileged from the "perspective of 50% of the worlds population you are delusional.
"That stated, too many whites vote against their own self interests but "this doesn't make me hate them. It does confuse the hell out of me "however. "I have no idea how to reach them. In almost all one on one conversations "it's pretty easy to get them to admit to very progressive ideas. "How to get them to act on them is beyond me."
John Thornton