Labor Aristocracy - Use Within Marxism

Use Within Marxism

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In Marxist theory, those workers (proletarians) in developed countries who benefit from the superprofits extracted from the impoverished workers of developing countries form an "aristocracy of labor." The phrase was popularized by Karl Kautsky in 1901 and theorized by Vladimir Lenin in his treatise on Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. According to Lenin companies in the developed world exploit workers in the developing world where wages are much lower. The increased profits enable these companies to pay higher wages to their employees "at home" (that is, in the developed world), thus creating a working class satisfied with their standard of living and not inclined to proletarian revolution. It is thus a form of exporting poverty, creating an "exclave" of lower social class. Lenin contended that imperialism had prevented increasing class polarization in the developed world, and argued that a workers' revolution could only begin in one of the developing countries, such as Imperial Russia.

The concept of a labor aristocracy is controversial in the Marxist movement. While the theory is formally shared by most currents that identify positively with Lenin, including the Communist International, few organizations place the theory at the center of their work. The term is most widely used in the United States, where it was popularized in the decade prior to the First World War by Eugene Debs's Socialist Party of America, and the Industrial Workers of the World (see below). In Britain those who hold to this theory include the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and the Revolutionary Communist Group, Many Trotskyists, including Leon Trotsky himself, and the early congresses of the Fourth International, have accepted the theory of the labor aristocracy: others, including Ernest Mandel and Tony Cliff, considered the theory to have mistaken arguments or "Third Worldist" implications. US revolutionary socialist Charlie Post has developed a contemporary critique of the theory.

Albanian leader and Marxist Enver Hoxha gave the following explanation for the development of the labor aristocracy following the Second World War:

The development of the economy in the West after the war also exerted a great influence on the spread of opportunist and revisionist ideas in the communist parties. True, Western Europe was devastated by the war but its recovery was carried out relatively quickly. The American capital which poured into Europe through the 'Marshall Plan' made it possible to reconstruct the factories, plants, transport and agriculture so that their production extended rapidly. This development opened up many jobs and for a long period, not only absorbed all the free labour force but even created a certain shortage of labour.

This situation, which brought the bourgeoisie great superprofits, allowed it to loosen its purse-strings a little and soften the labour conflicts to some degree. In the social field, in such matters as social insurance, health, education, labour legislation etc., it took some measures for which the working class had fought hard. The obvious improvement of the standard of living of the working people in comparison with that of the time of the war and even before the war, the rapid growth of production, which came as a result of the reconstruction of industry and agriculture and the beginning of the technical and scientific revolution, and the full employment of the work force, opened the way to the flowering among the unformed opportunist element of views about the development of capitalism without class conflicts, about its ability to avoid crises, the elimination of the phenomenon of unemployment etc. That major teaching of Marxism-Leninism, that the periods of peaceful development of capitalism becomes a source for the spread of opportunism, was confirmed once again. The new stratum of the worker aristocracy, which increased considerably during this period, began to exert an ever more negative influence in the ranks of the parties and their leaderships by introducing reformist and opportunist views and ideas.

Under pressure of these circumstances, the programs of these communist parties were reduced more and more to democratic and reformist minimum programs, while the idea of the revolution and socialism became ever more remote. The major strategy of the revolutionary transformation of society gave way to the minor strategy about current problems of the day which was absolutized and became the general political and ideological line. —Enver Hoxha