Labor Aristocracy: Mass Base of Social Democracy - Paperback

by Hodee Waldstein Edwards (Author), Paul David Richards (Editor)

Aristocracies have always existed at the pleasure of the king and loyally served his interests. Western popular support for our monstrous wars arises from the fact that our material prosperity is inextricably tied to the super profits of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation of the nations of what is now called the Global South. Imperialist super profits accrued by US multi national corporations are the material base of western prosperity. They are the new kings of the capitalist world.

First published in 1978, this book undertakes to apply official U.S. and other data to the criteria for a labor aristocracy which Lenin set forth in his "Preface to the German and French editions" of "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism." Supported by 32 statistical tables, it proves that, today, the entire working class of the West constitutes a labor aristocracy on a world scale; that its former "crumbs" from the capitalists' table have, due to the escalation of imperialism's parasitism, augmented greatly; that the labor aristocracy's acceptance of this kick-back, which Lenin called "imperialist bribery," has created for them in the West a "Way of Life" such that a serious internal contradiction now exists within the international proletariat between workers in the West and those of the "Third World," aka the Global South.