Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 15:28:29 -0800
From: Mark Jones <Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-G: Re: MIM sweeps away assorted rubbish


Mim3 said:

> Gary seeks to cover up for the labor aristocracy. This is
> especially dangerous amongst those claiming to be Marxist ...

> However, Gary fails to understand that Lenin believed that the nature of
> the labor aristocracy depended on concrete conditions--war, depression,
> length of time of corruption. Lenin gave no unconditional defense of the
> labor aristocracy as part of the proletariat as Gary and others on this
> List do.
>

MIM3's analysis does advance understanding of the labour-aristocracy and 
social-imperialism.. But Lenin is not in fact describing anything as
historically-real and solid as a *class*: it is a shifting morass of
petit-bourgoies insecurity, pathological chauvinism, social envy, of fawning
before their betters and so on. More: the labour-aristocracy is the site of the
revolutionary vanguard, whenever one appears, and the bridge between the
intelligentsia and the masses, classically-speaking (not sure about today, when
the intelligentsia is so lumpenised itself and when mass false consciousness is
manipulated like silly putty by the Murdochised media). It's good and bad.

Anyone living in the West is the beneficiary of the social capital amassed
during centuries of genocidal plunder of other cultures and peoples. But to say
that western proletarians do not produce relative surplus value in phenomenal
amounts is surely wrong? And I guess you would have to apply to Doug Henwood to
know how much workers with pensions or stocks and bonds actually benefit, but
the amounts are puny. Today's workers are no different from their forebears. The
American workers who led heroic organised struggles in the industrialising
post-civil war US were also the 'beneficiaries' of the genocidal clearance of
the First Nations. That really doesn't change anything. They were not members of
the petit bourgeoisie because of that.

Lenin had high hopes of the German workers and their social-democratic leaders.
When the s-d's voted for war credits in 1914, and the cream of the world's
organised and militant proletariat meekly marched off to die in the trenches for
the Kaiser, the shock was very great. Nor did the behaviour of German workers
after the war lessen Lenin's disillusionment. But that does not mean they were
not members of the proletariat who produced surplus-value in huge amounts.




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