On the Labor Aristokkkracy

Joma: Hey friends, Joma here. Wow, it's been a minute. So Nate and I's intention with the podcast is for it to reach as broad of an audience as possible. And so with that, we want to make sure that we're being accessible, that we're defining terms, that way anyone can follow along and keep up. And so my partner did us a huge solid and listened through this episode before we released it to identify areas where basically where Nate and I were just yapping, getting all jargony and technical and where we didn't define concepts. And they are a PhD student and do composition and music. And so political economy in this way isn't necessarily their expertise. And so they're able to listen through and say, hey, this was a little dense. What did you mean by blah, blah, blah? And so the three concepts that they pulled out for us to define are the labor aristocracy, dialectical materialism, and the law of capitalist development. So I'm going to define them right now. For the labor aristocracy, we're referring to a privileged stratum or part of the working class in imperialist countries or the imperial core. So that would be America with three Ks or Europe. whose relatively higher wages and standard of living are derived or depend upon the super profits that are extracted from workers in the global south. Thereby, the interests of these workers in the global north are aligned more closely with the bourgeoisie than with the broader proletariat, or more aligned with the capitalists in the imperial core rather than the broader global proletariat or workers. So the theory of labor aristocracy speaks to the difficulties in organizing these workers whose standards of living are derived from the spoils of imperialism and whose material interests are often not aligned with workers in the global south. So to me, concrete examples always help. And so a concrete example of someone in the labor aristocracy, let's say in America with three Ks, could be a unionized factory worker in the automotive industry. who often earn significantly higher wages, enjoy comprehensive benefits like health care and pensions, and have relative job stability. their relatively privileged position is sustained by the global exploitation of workers in countries where these raw materials are sourced or where the parts are manufactured at much lower costs, which ties the economic stability of these workers in the labor aristocracy to the imperialist structures themselves. And so maybe the rubber is being sourced from Southeast Asia, from Vietnam or from the Philippines, for example. Another example we could look at could be a software engineer at a major U.S. tech company like Google or Apple. So this worker enjoys a high salary, stock options, generous benefits, a comfortable work environment. And their privileged position is made possible by the exploitation of workers in the Global South, such as people working in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo that are extracting cobalt for electronics or factory workers in China that are assembling devices under harsh conditions. So the software engineer's economic stability depends on maintaining or depends on this global supply chain. A third example, we can stick with the tech company example, could be a call center worker in the Philippines. So this worker provides customer support for the same products, but they earn a fraction of the US software engineer's wage, which is often facing, while often facing precarious working conditions, long hours and limited benefits. So while the US engineer benefits from the company's global dominance, and the exploitation of cheaper labor, the Filipino workers' interests lie in fair wages, better working conditions, and an end to imperialist labor practices, goals that are directly in conflict with the profit-driven model that sustains the wages of the software developer in, let's say, Silicon Valley or in America with 3Ks. So what, you know, astute person would say, like what stops someone in the labor aristocracy from recognizing their interconnectivity with workers in the global south? We discussed this in the episode, but a short answer would be the geographic and cultural distance between U.S. workers or workers in Europe and and workers in the Global South, making it difficult to build solidarity. Without direct exposure to these conditions that are faced by these workers, it's much easier to ignore them or downplay their exploitation. I think there's also a level of not realizing, or a level of, besides doomerism, I don't know what to say, a level of like, there's nothing that I can do about it. I'm just one person. Additionally, corporations promote superficial forms of corporate social responsibility or ethical consumerism that gives the illusion of addressing global inequalities without really challenging or addressing the underlying structures of exploitation. This can divert well-meaning engineers into reformist efforts that fail to address the root causes. And then there's an overall lack of class consciousness, which are all tied together into the superstructure or the ways that domination is maintained. And this partly has to do with how in STEM programs, oftentimes people that study computer science or in STEM don't get exposed to these interconnectivities, to the humanities, to liberal arts. Of course, that's not across the board, but these are in broad strokes. So that's the labor aristocracy, in short, the privileged stratum of the working class in the imperial core, whose relatively higher wages and standard of living are derived from super profits. So next is dialectical materialism. So this is something that Nate mentions later, but dialectical materialism is the philosophical framework developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which analyzes the material conditions of society as the foundation or the driver of historical development. It might be helpful to think of this as in opposition to idealism. So for example, like philosophers like Aristotle, going way back, or we can look at Hegel. Unlike them, dialectical materialism grounds historical processes in progress in concrete material forces. particularly in the mode of production, rather than in ideas or spiritual forces. And so unlike Hegel, who talked about the geist or the great spirit that's unraveling and becoming self-aware, for Marx, what drives history is actually material processes. I'll just take a step back to just look at the two words, dialectical, material. Dialectical, always in movement, not a static category. Material, literally think of materiality. So it's not the ideas. And so if we think of the answer to why capitalism developed in America, someone like Weber would say, well, it was capitalism, the spirit of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic. Whereas Marx would say, well, actually, it was the genocide of the indigenous peoples. It was the forced enslavement and the violent rupture of stealing bodies and labor. It was all of these mechanisms of domination that led to capitalism developing in America. It was the plantation economy. It was all of these processes. So foundational texts would include Marx's Grundrisse, as well as Marx and Engels' The German Ideology, which lays out what's known as the materialist conception of history. And we'll put that in the show notes as well. As well as Lenin's Materialism and Imperial Criticism, which is a defense of dialectical materialism against idealist deviations. You can also see a short essay from Mao called Dialectical Materialism, which I'll also put in the show notes. That's a good start to at least get you, so when you hear dialectical materialism, think of, okay, the philosophical framework that undergirds Marxist analysis or what we call scientific socialism. And maybe at some point we'll do some episodes on these terms, but this is just by way of introduction. Lastly is the capitalist law of development, which I refer to later. And by this, I mean the ways that capital and the inherent tendencies in capital for constant accumulation and contradiction and crisis. So Marx has several laws that he talks about, about the accumulation of capital, about the ways that capital centralizes, where wealth and power become increasingly concentrated in fewer hands, where with competition between different businesses, if you think of capitalist relations in the beginning, you have these small sort of mom and pop shops, and then next thing you know, Amazon is coming in and gobbling up things, and these monopolies control more and more. he also talks about the law of population in chapter 25 of capital in volume one and with this he is where he talks about a surplus population or an army of reserve labor essentially because of technological progress, people become redundant. You don't need their physical labor anymore. And so for Marx, he was saying that because of the capitalist law of development, which includes all of these things, we have this problem and this inherent problem within capitalism itself where people are rendered useless or rendered, what's the specific word I want here? Not useless, but repetitive, redundant in the eyes of capital. And so Samir Amin, who's building on Marx, he emphasizes how these laws operate on a global scale through unequal development and through imperialism. So he argues that capitalism inherently creates a polarized world system where core capitalist countries exploit the periphery or exploit the peripheral nations, or to be even more technical, he would say the peripheral social formations in the global South that's perpetuating underdevelopment and dependency. So this global dimension is central to understanding how the capitalist law of development reproduces itself through the exploitation of labor and resources worldwide. So in short, the capitalist law of development encapsulates the systemic forces that drive capitalism's growth, its crises, as well as global inequalities, which are all rooted in its relentless pursuit of ceaseless profit. So when you hear the capitalist law of development being mentioned, it's these sets of prophecies. And what we talk about in this episode is how we need to ground it and see how it operates on a global scale, which Samir Amin does, but also Marx does it really well. And so... For folks who haven't read, I mean, obviously read Marx, but for those that are newer, like chapter 25 does a really excellent job of talking about these opposite poles of development on one side and underdevelopment on the other. And other thinkers and authors that we cite and talk about on this podcast from Walter Rodney to Samir Amin, of course, Emil Clark Cabral and others talk about the same process. Okay, so that should get us to a good place. Enjoy the show. Welcome to JDPod, where we spell America with three Ks. This is a podcast where we, Joma and Nate, discuss current events from a third-worldist perspective. All right. Well, hey, everyone. So welcome back to J.D. Pod. It's been a minute since our last episode. Also a minute since like Nate and I have seen each other. But we wanted to start out by addressing the fires that hit L.A. recently. And so where were you when? Yeah. What was your experience like with the fires?

Nate: So I live in the very northern part of Glendale, if anyone is familiar with the Los Angeles area, which is really close to Altadena and Pasadena, which got hit particularly hard by the fires. And Altadena is a historically black community, a lot of black middle class folks who could afford to, I guess in the like commonly used parlance of middle class, but who were able to initially buy homes there when there were like racially restrictive covenants in most other parts of Los Angeles. So that was kind of the flip side of the coin to the Palisades fires, which mostly burned down the homes of extremely wealthy individuals. Yeah. And so being in the northern part of Glendale, relatively close to Altadena, I was evacuated for a couple of days just out of a sense of caution. I was really worried originally because I couldn't pack up a lot of things before I left. I have a really small car, and it was very short notice. I didn't want to get caught. um like stuck in an area if they were cordoning it off there was a lot of confusion in the first couple days like people didn't know like if areas were going to be completely like again cordoned off and people wouldn't be able to go back to their homes at all or getting caught in traffic jams on the way out things like that um so i just packed my car with as much stuff as possible went over and stayed at my girlfriend's house for a Um, and just kind of talking to a lot of people in the aftermath of that, I still had to go to work though. Um, I still had to go, I have two jobs and so I still had to go to work and it was really strange in certain communities how, um, they acted kind of like it was business as usual. We're kind of like vaguely talk. I work in a restaurant and people were just like in, in, uh, Beverly Hills, um, And it was funny how people were just kind of vaguely talking about the fires and like some of the wealthier people were like, oh, yeah, my friend's place in Malibu burned down. But like there's no like good.

Joma: Yeah, exactly.

Nate: No one there's no like, oh, they have insurance and they can go to their their house in New York City and shit like that. Like, you know, really like silly fucking bullshit. But the situation in the the eastern part of the city was much different.

Joma: Yeah. And for me, I live in Northeast LA and friends of mine live a street, like live like a street down. Also in like the part of town that I'm in got an evacuation order. And I didn't. And so I didn't really think much of like in the moment as like people were kind of freaking out. I grew up in Florida. And so I was used to like hurricanes and constant evacuations. And to me, I associate these sorts of like natural disasters, quote unquote natural, as like, from what I remember as a kid, like, oh, this is going to be time to see family and like play video games or something with my cousins. And so my partner and I went to Cerritos, like Orange County area, which is also where a lot of Filipinos are. like Cerritos and Carson in that area. And so yeah, so we just spent a couple of days there. Classes like moved on Zoom and so I didn't have to deal with that, which was helpful. But yeah, all in all like got lucky. The air quality was really, really, really bad. And so like came up here and back to LA a few days later. Was unsure if we're gonna have to go like evacuate somewhere else. Ended up... It feels like it's so long ago. I'm like, where did I... But I ended up staying somewhere else for a couple of days because of the air quality. And there were reports about since a lot of the homes were built in the 60s or 70s, or not even then, when there's lead and asbestos and whatever else that is in the air. And so not to be fooled by blue skies and that sort of thing. So just... Yeah, there's a really great podcast episode. I don't know if you listened to it on Rev Left Radio about the fires. And they go in more detail specifically about it, but on our end, we made it out okay. And so that's partly why we were taking a break. There's a lot of organizing going on, a lot of mutual aid stuff, and all of the local organizations and national chapters and also the indie movement and other organizations organizations are actively trying to do various mass work. And for those who aren't familiar with those phrases, mass work being like mutual aid, things like distribution of goods and water and clothing and that sort of thing. But with that said, today we're going to be talking about the theory of the labor aristocracy. And what spurred this decision was an essay that came out from Frizzo, which is the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. This came out last month, almost two months now, actually. I looked at it, it was like December 4th. And it created quite a stir on Twitter, of all, like, whatever. But anyways, and this isn't like a... critique percent like this isn't like a a takedown of frizzo because like me personally actually out of all the national chapters i really like frizzo like this essay was really bad in my opinion and we'll talk about it um and also the political like the the ramifications of it is really serious but at the same time From what I've seen in LA, they're one of the only national chapter organizations that are actively organizing with the indie movement and with other organizations that I think have good politics.

Nate: Yeah, I mean, that's fair. I'm pretty ambivalent about them personally. And I like for reasons discussed in this article, I think they do do good work on the local level, I'm sure. But I think the analysis in the article speaks for itself. And we don't need it's honestly not targeting for so in particular, because I think every major so-called communist party in the United States upholds a similar line, even if they don't come up with come out with articles about Um, specifically stating it as such. I know from my time in PSL, this is like essentially the same analysis we had with regard to the notions of internal colonialism, settler colonialism and its impact on the capacity for communist organization in the United States. And yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it in terms of this is a critique of the broader communist milieu and its incapacity to properly deal with the question of labor aristocracy and how it intersects with imperialism and colonialism.

Joma: Excellent. Okay, so let's turn to this essay. And I'm going to read three different quotes. That way, it's not like just our interpretation per se of it, but and then we can comment. So they write, quote, what's at stake in the debate over settler colonialism in the US, or in America with three Ks? To put it as plainly as possible, if the proponents of the US settler colonialism theory are correct, then there is no basis whatsoever upon which to build a multinational, working class, communist party in this country. Indeed, such a view sees the quote, settler working class, unquote, as instruments of colonialism, hostile to the interests of the colonized people, rather than viewing all working and oppressed people as natural allies in the struggle against imperialism, our mutual oppressor. Obviously, this is a very important strategic point, and it cannot go unaddressed. We should examine where this theory comes from and look at how it can be answered by Marxist-Leninist science." They write, quote, And quote number three, they write, This ought to be contrasted with the Marxist-Leninist view, which sees the United States as an advanced, imperialist country. Again, we see a division of US society into two camps. On the one hand, there is the camp of the capitalists, and on the other, the oppressed and exploited masses of workers and oppressed nationalities. The principal contradiction is therefore between the capitalist class on the one hand, and the multinational working class and its allies on the other, particularly the oppressed nations. historical development is a law governed process and it is a law of capitalist development that this basic class struggle is the fundamental contradiction inherent to capitalist society, end quote. And I wanted to comment on this one, this quote first, and that is on the law of capitalist development And so I just wanted to note on the law of capitalist development section that when we think about the law of capitalist development and about class struggle, we have to understand that this occurs on a world scale. And I think that's central. And I really think that's why we need to be reading Samir Amin. I know you and I took that course where we read through Amin's excellent book, Unequal Development. Folks should really check that book out. But when we think about this principle contradiction, this doesn't just happen just at the level of the factory, just between the worker and the bosses, the abstract category of worker, the abstract category of the capitalists. But there's a level of when we think about the international division of labor and also when we think about unequal exchange that gets erased in this analysis.

Nate: So I think before critiquing these points a little bit more specifically... And like kind of, you know, answering some of the claims that some of its proponents might make. I think it would be a really great idea to kind of do a summary overview of the history of the concept of the labor aristocracy and of what we would argue to be the actually existing phenomena of the labor aristocracy. Sure.

Joma: So. The first place that I've seen it, and it doesn't really matter who said it first, but there's a letter from Engels to Kotsky in 1882. And it's a pretty short letter. You can find it on Marxist.org. I guess we can throw it in the show notes. But he writes, quote, you ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. The same as what the bourgeois think. There is no workers' party here. There are only conservatives and liberal radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England's monopoly of the world market and the colonies. And I came across this quote actually in the infamous debate between John Smith and David Harvey about imperialism, which maybe we're going to do an episode about imperialism in general and talk about that. There's Lenin in 1907 in the International Socialist Congress. In Stuttgart, he writes, quote, or says, quote, the non-propertied but non-working class is incapable of overthrowing the exploiters. Only the proletarian class, which maintains the whole of society, can bring about the social revolution. However, and this is sort of the key point, as a result of the extensive colonial policy, the European proletarian party finds itself in a position when it is not his labor, but the labor of the practically enslaved natives in the colonies that maintains the whole of society. The British bourgeoisie, for example, derives more profit from the many millions of the population of India and other colonies than from the British workers. In certain countries, this provides the material and economic basis for infecting the proletariat with colonial chauvinism. And I hope he's right. Yeah.

Nate: I don't know if he is, at least for now. I mean, that was 120 years ago, and I don't think he, I mean, I wonder what he would have thought, you know, 20, 30 years later, but.

Joma: Sure. The one thing I wanted to pull out here is the as a result of the extensive colonial policy, the European proletarian partly finds himself in a position when it's not as labor, but the labor of the practically enslaved natives in the colonies that maintains the whole of society. I think that's really crucial. And like in the Frizzo article, they talk about how the U.S. is not a colony, but an imperialist power. And I think regardless of what happens internal to the quote unquote, like you can say the logo map, that's how Daniel Amarvar talked about it, but like the territory of America with three Ks, it still rests upon the unequal exchange from the global south. And this quote from Lenin is really helpful to think about, like, actually, it's not the labor of the construction worker or the I'm just trying to think of like what we think what someone thinks of as a worker in America. But it's the like, what's the privileges that are won by being in in the US and having access to this reminds me like the banana discourse that happened a while back and like, but having access to the things that we have access to here through the materiality of the world system that the U.S. has recreated at the end of World War II, etc.

Nate: Yeah, I have some great quotes to that end that actually specifically speak to some of the categories of workers you just mentioned.

Joma: So then there's one more quote from Lenin, and this is in the popular book or pamphlet, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which I think everyone should read, not as sacrosanct script, but it's an important text. And so in the preface to the French and German editions, he writes, quote, Obviously, out of such enormous super profits, since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their, quote, own country, it is possible to bribe the labor leaders in the upper stratum of the labor aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the, quote, advanced countries are doing. They are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert. This stratum of workers turned bourgeois, or, quote, the labor aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings, and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the second international, and in our days, the principal social, not military prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the, quote, real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement, the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class." And I think we'll just end there on that quote. What I wanted to pull out was his concept about the labor aristocracy and bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.

Nate: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is like a key point from which every other kind of more modern theory of labor aristocracy may be more comprehensive theories of labor aristocracy and ones that kind of examine the conditions of the capitalist world system as it really developed further in the 20th and into the 21st centuries. So over time in that period, you know, thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah, Walter Rodney, Amilcar Cabral, to more homegrown ones like Jay Sakai, and the Black Liberation Army, the Weather Underground, and many new African revolutionary nationalists and white anti-imperialist groups engaged in various forms of struggle, including the clandestine arms struggle. But also, you know, Argyri and Manuel, theorists in the Communist Task Force of the KAK, more recently, Zach Cope, at least prior to his strange turn. RIP. Yeah, RIP. They all expanded on this concept and they apply it to the context of neocolonialism and globalization. Some with a specific focus on internal colonialism, national self-determination, and the application of theories of whiteness or white supremacy as integral to an understanding of the labor aristocracy in the present period. And especially in the American context, though, it can be argued that those racial colonial dynamics are embedded in Europe, in Latin America, and all around the world as part of the world system. But there's this great line from Walter Rodney and Joma is part of a collective that's working to actually republish decolonial Marxism in a better format. How would you describe it?

Joma: Yeah, in a better format. I mean, the name decolonial Marxism wasn't in vogue at the time before Walter was assassinated. And so, to me, it comes as a cash grab to try to hop on the decolonial train by Verso. But also, like... some of the organizing like parts of the, there were no like headnotes, there were no like context for like why certain things were included. Some things weren't included. Uh, and also like in this volume, this is like really excellent, like, you know, quote unquote scientific socialist stuff that were, um, I just don't think decolonial Marxism was, was the term that should have been used. So yeah, that's the project. Um, yeah.

Nate: Okay, yeah. Thank you for that, gentlemen. We're all looking forward to that when it fully develops. So Rodney in this quote states that the bourgeoisie themselves recognize their vulnerability in the third world. They recognize that Marxist thought has a double potency, if you like, in the third world countries. And we saw that happening throughout the 20th century. as parties explicitly scientific socialists, some explicitly Marxist-Leninist, all kind of utilizing dialectical materialism and Marxian understandings of political economy, even those that didn't necessarily call themselves as such. were incredibly, like Rodney said, potent and powerful and victorious in the third world. And in that context, Rodney also goes on to state that, I believe this is in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, That, quote, the white working class in the USA is historically incapable of participating as a class in anti-imperialist struggle. White racism and America's leading role in world imperialism transformed organized labor in the U.S. into a reactionary force. And again, this is Walter Rodney saying this. This isn't J. Sakai. And I know there's, you know, J. Sakai obviously read Walter Rodney, but like, I'm sure people in First So would be like, oh, yeah, we've read How Europe and Underdeveloped Africa. May I jump in?

Joma: I think... There's a lot here that you could share about like, not just like, so like the white working class as a class, not being able to enter history and participate in anti-imperial struggle, but clearly there were like race traitors or there were white people who, I think it was a WDB boy who talked about like how Lenin like refused whiteness or like,

Nate: Oh, Stalin refused whiteness.

Joma: Oh, how Stalin... Hell yeah. How Stalin refused whiteness. But there's these people that have... Which is another critique that we both come up with with this sort of framing is this like... uh instrumentalist sort of view that like oh uh like all white like people are therefore not able to it's like no like if we look at um finon's on a dying colonialism this is the chapter maybe chapter three or five i don't remember offhand but on Algeria's European minority, where they talk about how these people joined the struggle for national liberation, and they were seen as Algerians.

Nate: Absolutely, and I highly recommend that chapter. That's one of my favorite chapters in any form of analysis I've ever read. But, I mean, obviously, and again, we'll kind of get into this, um that chapter very specifically and obviously that's not all the ways that settlers white people however you want um workers in the imperial core the labor aristocracy or um as we'll get into some people call it the worker elite in the imperialist uh countries could possibly participate in anti-imperialist struggle in any case what i was uh trying to say before i digressed is that there's specific terms under which that can happen. And I think the Algerian example is pretty instructive because the French Communist Party was horribly antagonistic to the national liberation struggle in Algeria. And certainly there were members of the Communist Party who were very much in favor of the national liberation struggle. And potentially some of those settlers who transitioned into becoming Algerians by becoming of the National Liberation Struggle may have been involved in the Communist Party. But it was not under the Communist Party that they participated in that struggle. It was under the leadership of the FLN and through joining the FLN. I think that's pretty instructive if we think about how we can carry on that example potentially in the present and into the future.

Joma: Yeah, and I just wanted to make a quick note for those because we went pretty quickly on talking about Algeria and Algeria's minority and Fanon and the FLN. So in 1954, the Algerian National Liberation Front, the FLN, formed and began an armed struggle to overthrow and push out the French occupying Algeria. settler uh settlers that were occupying um what was seen as what was called french algiers but uh algeria and in 1962 they won uh independence but this was through uh an armed struggle that in many ways like resembled um like the victoria like october 7th where like they made the condition so impossible for settlers to want to just stay and continue reaping and reaping Yeah, like enjoying the privileges of being settlers that France was forced to give up its colony. And Fanon was a psychiatrist and was working – during the war, but also as a partisan for the FLN. And he wrote a lot of important books, but the most common one people know is, well, it depends on your discipline, but it's How Europe, it's Wretched of the Earth. And then there's also Black Skin, White Mask, which is another important text from him.

Nate: And To Die in Colonialism, which is the one we've, we cited previously.

Joma: yeah so that's for those who have not heard and this is a really phenomenal film um the battle of algiers came out and i think 1966 i want to guess yeah um which was like the screenplay was written by the leader of the fln like when he was in prison and the algerian nation like paid to have it produced as like this sort of nationalist story it's really a phenomenal and most of the actors were actually partisans in the fln as well like actually playing themselves essentially Right. There's only one actual professional actor, and that was the French general. It's a really excellent film. I always try to show it to students. I think it's in the Criterion Collection, which that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth seeing. But for those that are film people, that might mean something to you. But if you haven't watched it, The Battle of Algiers, make it a priority.

Nate: Yeah, and this is pretty common knowledge, I suppose, but maybe not to listeners, but the Black Panther Party actually used it as a training video, and then the FBI and the CIA actually, State Department, actually organized private screenings to, you know, so they could better shape their counterinsurgency efforts. So it's been useful to both the colonizers and the colonized, as it were.

Joma: Right, and this was right before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and so they were showing it at the Pentagon. And so you have these different showings, which is very fascinating. But we'll get off this digression.

Nate: So I wanted to specifically highlight the work of a author named Brahma, who wrote this really incredible short book called The Worker Elite that was put out by Chris Blebedeb, which is a publishing house, which has put out a lot of really incredible work. revolutionary nationalist, Maoist, other radical sort of texts over the years. Brahma was an auto worker in America with three Ks who became part of the so-called working class labor force is part of a kind of back to the factories trend among people affiliated with the, especially the new communist movement, um, uh, which was historically kind of, uh, uh, outgrowth of Marxist Leninist, particularly, uh, Maoist, um, organizations in the aftermath of the new left period, I suppose you would call it. Um,

Joma: and can you just give just a little bit more background for like the new, the new left and.

Nate: Yeah, sure. So like the new left being, you know, this very youthful, um, youthful, uh, broad based, uh, trend. It wasn't like a unified movement. It was really a trend in throughout the, especially throughout the Western world, if we're being honest, um, because, but it kind of arose alongside national liberation struggles around the world. And, and, At its best, it was deeply inspired by those struggles and incorporated their analysis, but it was heavily dominated by students, members of what we could call the labor aristocracy or their children, though there was obviously a lot of oppressed nations, colonized peoples, the true proletarians, as it were, who were deeply involved as well. But they had a different analysis. They weren't as tied to the CPUSA. They really weren't tied to the CPUSA or the more traditional communist parties. In fact, they were pretty antagonistic to, for example, the Maoist Progressive Labor Party, which had a really archaic way of looking at the way struggle is being waged. But all that is to say that was like the ferment out of which SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society, the Weather Underground, the Black Panther Party, they didn't emerge, but they all kind of coalesced and interacted with each other and interacted with the broader anti-war movement, all these other sorts of things. Yeah.

Joma: Yeah, and we're talking roughly the 1960s, the 1970s.

Nate: Yeah, 1960s and the very early 1970s. And the new communist movement is one of, I guess I would say, two major trends in revolutionary left organizing in the aftermath. One being... armed struggle, um, led by, um, internal, internally colonized people's revolutionary nationalists, particularly within the new African or black nation, um, and their allies in the white anti-imperialist groups. Also, you know, um, American Indian national liberation movements like aim, like really emergence emerging in this time, um, And then conversely, you have not conversely, but you have the new communist movement, which very much kind of argued, though, that there was national oppression within the United States, that it was possible to build multinational communist parties formations. within the United States. Obviously, again, that recognized the issues of imperialism and national oppression, but they had a different analysis and a different practice. And to go back to my original point, Brahma was one of these communists, and a lot of them still identified with proletarian struggle as such, meaning specifically talking about workers in factories, that sort of thing. And so a lot of these students would drop out of school or graduate and then take on jobs in factories, jobs in industry as a means of organizing and embedding themselves with what they saw to be the proletariat. And in the preface to this book, Brahma talks about how really he wasn't embedding himself in the proletariat. He was embedding himself in the labor aristocracy. And that didn't mean he like hated the people he worked with. He didn't hate himself, but he knew that the people he worked with and himself were not going to be the ones leading a revolution because they were highly privileged because they were subject to social bribery and And really, I'll kind of read a little bit, you know, some excerpts from the book. I highly recommend it for its unique sort of perspective on the labor aristocracy or as Brahma terms it, the worker elite. So he argues for, I believe, I mean, he has a comprehensive analysis, but I think there's a four-factor functions of the worker elite is the section of the book, but there's four ABCD notions to it. So A, the worker elite absorbs and co-ops proletarian struggle. When proletarian insurgency grows, the bourgeoisie responds with a mix of repression and social bribery to combat it. Systematic privilege may be extended to a section of the proletariat offering tailored reforms and a preferential social contract in order to obtain that section's loyalty and divide it permanently from its rebellious counterparts. emblematic of this process is franklin roosevelt's new deal which effectively transformed millions of rebellious proletarian immigrants in the u.s into a loyal white worker elite this corrupt arrangement seriously undermined proletarian solidarity and political struggle for generations while simultaneously laying the foundation for the global projection of the u.s imperial power Second, the worker elite provides mass acquiescence and mass support for anti-proletarian politics, including settler colonialism, imperialist war, male domination, and genocide. The worker elite, because of its privileges, sees its fortune as tied to the fortune of the ruling class and therefore normally tries to help it succeed. Again, the New Deal provides a blueprint, as just one example. In the 1930s, Roosevelt encouraged white US workers to join unions as part of an extensive national social contract. Yet at the exact same time, Puerto Rican trade unionists were being gunned down in the streets. Roosevelt was counting on his work early to accept this imperialist dichotomy, and for the most part they have. The ruling class relies on this specific kind of mass passivity and complicity to gain freedom of action in repressing the proletariat. Moving a bit forward to the third point. The worker elite influences and tries to dominate the proletariat politically and ideology, asserting control over its struggles and organizations and constructing the limits of its dissent. For instance, the worker elite pushes itself forward as the natural leader of trade unions and other labor organizations, even those initiated and populated by proletarians. It lays claim to representing all working class interests in every area of public discourse, including within the main capitalist political parties. The ruling class backs up this claim with ideological, political, and financial support. And finally, and this is pretty key. The worker elite serves as an object of longing for the proletariat and embodies living proof that some working class people can achieve privileged middle class lives. For many proletarians, the question then becomes not how can we make revolution, but how can I become part of the worker elite? The worker elite's leadership actively encourages this wishful thinking. For example, the AFL-CIO, in many ways the world's headquarters of the worker elite, has launched numerous initiatives in the U.S. to organize immigrant workers from Latin America. In virtually every case, immigrants are encouraged to embrace the American dream of privileged life in the metropolis as their only legitimate goal. Of course, most proletarian immigrants from Latin America never reach the promised dream. In reality, this is an invitation for workers to cut their ties with the labor movements in Latin America, movements which are often substantially more anti-capitalist and proletarian than those in the United States. This approach also helps divide Latin American workers from new African proletarians, who are, with limited exceptions, permanently and institutionally excluded from the American dream. The AFL-CIO approach is an attempt to increase its due roles and leverage within the ruling class while simultaneously grooming Latin American immigrants to function as a disciplined workforce for North American capitalism. So that's, again, that was an extended quote, but I think that kind of lays out a good deal of Brahma's analysis of the worker elite.

Joma: Wow, that was really good. I think folks should rewind that and re-listen to it. I think it would be worth your time if you've made it this far, because there's a lot there that's really helpful. And when he says the worker elite, we can interpose this with the labor aristocracy, which just for clarity reasons.

Nate: Yeah. And I mean, he kind of goes back and forth between using the terms, even though he's more favorable to work early. But and then I don't need to read this at length, but it's really incredible, really incredible kind of exemplification of what he's talking about and really like antagonistic to the notion that, you know. workers of the world unite as such that all workers in the world have the same interests and the same material position as proletarians. He has this conceptualization of middle class construction workers in the US and the fact that there are plenty of construction workers who are not union construction workers, who are not middle class ones in the US. They perform the exact same job functions. But they do it for a fraction of the pay in much more difficult working conditions and face a much higher level of violence if they attempt to organize, for example. And, you know, he poses the question of why, for example, shipyard welders in North America make 20 to 30 times the real wage of a seamstress in, say, Bangladesh. he's kind of basically getting at even though he doesn't necessarily use the terms of an equal exchange as such but he's getting at the fact that the and he goes into you know discussion of profit discretion discussion of the global political economy in terms of how wages can be so high in the imperialist core relative to the super exploitation of people in the global south and But he basically talks about how being in the worker elite, to summarize it, doesn't mean that your labor is actually worth more or you're performing more valuable labor for the world system, but rather because of your position in the imperialist core and as a way of suppressing workers within the imperialist core and outside, you have to build this class of workers to And in turn, he goes into this really great discussion of how the taxes that these workers pay and the interest they have in terms of lobbying and campaigning for imperialist war and the production of imperialist war in terms of the fact that there's this great degree of chauvinism. There's numerous examples from the early 1970s. hardhats construction workers actively beating the shit out of anti-war protesters labor unions actively supporting the the war in Vietnam we don't have to go to the 70s we were just like in our episode in the ILA where we discussed that link the the refusal to like to strike

Joma: To stop arming ships that were going to fund or to be the material linkage to the bombs that were dropping on Gaza and that are currently dropping in the West Bank.

Nate: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, there's even more intensively, intimately connected struggles as well. I don't recall if we specifically discussed it in that episode, but, you know, workers at Raytheon who are building the bombs are unionized. They have a specific vested interest in maintaining war and deepening war and promulgating war. It's the basis for their privileges. And I think that's a really key point because if that's the case, your strategy for organization, the way you conceptualize the working class and who the true proletariat would be is going to be fundamentally different.

Joma: Yeah. And what a multinational working class would look like.

Nate: If that's even possible. Right. And I mean, there's the analysis of, you know, Sakai, which and I'll get into that. I can get into this in a little bit, which Brahma upholds. He talks about how he was very much influenced by the analysis of settlers and of new African nationalists, which settlers was written in conversation with. where the settler nation stands above and apart from the true proletariat, the true workers whose bodies and labor the basis for empire is, and the settler colonial project of the United States are built off of, which are internally colonized peoples. And the First Nations, American Indian peoples, indigenous peoples whose land this was stolen from and who themselves are exploited, if not outright genocided along with the new African nation.

Joma: Yeah, that's excellent. I wanted to return to the question of unequal exchange because this is central to even the conversation around the labor aristocracy is to think about the world system, to think about one's position within the international division of labor That quote about or the example about a construction worker compared to someone like a seamstress in Bangladesh is very instructive. This is a really great quote from Ali Qadri in the preface to one of his red-colored books. It's called China's Path to Development Against Neoliberalism. And in the preface, he writes, and it's a very short quote. He says, quote, it is no longer a case of fighting for an eight-hour workday. it is a case of making sure that shorter workdays in Europe, and you could say in America with three Ks, do not cause shorter lives in Iraq. Unquote. And I think that's a really excellent quote because when we think historically about unions and sort of the radical labor struggles, maybe it's because I lived in Chicago for a bit, but you think of Haymarket and you think of the fight for the eight-hour workday. But Really, in this moment, we're looking at not a fight for better working conditions or even for, what is this quote that we say, more for me is not liberate humanity, but it's the fact that my shorter eight-hour workday or six-hour workday or whatever it is here in the imperial core isn't shortening the life of those in the global south. And this is also, if folks haven't heard of, they should read Accumulation of Waste by Ali Qadri as well on the shortening of lives, being the conditions of possibility for the lives that we, the privileges that we live in America with 3Ks. And there's a really, really excellent, I'll put it in the show notes, it's an essay from Samir Amin, and it's called Contemporary Imperialism in the Agrarian Question. And this came out in 2012. It was the very first issue of Agrarian South, which I think is really instructive for what that journal is doing as the inaugural issue. And in it, he talks about a new agrarian question, which is that from the 1940s, the difference between highly industrialized production in farming compared to the peasant farmer in the global south was 10 to 1. So if you're in a global north or if you're an agribusiness, a transnational corporation producing through plantation style, through high mechanistic equipment, the difference between that and a subsistence farmer in, say, the Philippines was 10 to 1 in how much you were able to produce. Today, and that was in 1940, today that number on average is 2,000 to 1. And what he's saying is that there's no way for a farmer in the global south, in India, in the Philippines, wherever, to be able to compete on an international level with these big conglomerations and this sort of highly mechanistic production. The problem Facing us is not a question of the ability to produce enough, but it's the production of surplus people that have nowhere for their labor to be absorbed. And so we have to be able to think... World systemically. So we talk about the capitalist law of development, like that occurs on a world scale, like the principal contradiction between so-called like the capitalist and the worker, and like, oh, we all have the same oppressor being in America. Well, actually... just by the location of where we are in the international division of labor, forgoes us privileges that are extracted from the global south. And so that changes what, to quote Lenin, what is to be done.

Nate: Absolutely. And I think this is a great point to move into the questions and critiques that come up in these discussions, particularly by proponents of the analysis of first. So in that article, which is a broader sort of analysis, a broader sort of trend or position within the so-called revolutionary left in the United States.

Joma: Okay, so let's address some of the questions. So first is essentially the one posed by Frisdell, and it's, quote, if the U.S. is a settler colonial state, does that mean there's no basis for building a, quote, multinational communist party? In other words, does the theory of the labor aristocracy lead to defeatism?

Nate: Well, I guess it would depend on how you how you define defeatism. And I think it would be kind of our argument specifically that at least at the present and honestly, I mean, in the future, there's. Um, yeah.

Joma: And I want to point in here, like, this is a common, it sort of gets lodged against the quote unquote third worldists that, oh, there's no hope. And therefore, there's nothing like that should be done. Like, oh, we're giving up on the potentiality for one for revolution or for like, so what do we do? We like talk, we have a podcast and we like twiddle our thumbs.

Nate: Yeah, and I mean, again, this is the confusion of the form that revolutionary struggle will be taking the United States for these historic examples from the Soviet Union, from China, from Vietnam, from across the African and Latin American contexts, and confusion of the specific conditions which gave rise to successful revolutionary parties in those contexts. for we're going to copy and paste the same formula onto the so-called United States wholesale and assume that the contradictions and the settler colonial status and the imperialist status and the global hegemonic status of the United States aren't going to fundamentally influence the form that revolutionary struggle takes place. recognizing the reality of settler colonialism, of imperialism, and their role in promulgating the labor aristocracy isn't defeatist in the universal sense or the broader sense or the global sense. It's really clarifying. It helps us understand the material and ideological barriers to true notions of solidarity. And it helps us develop strategies to overcome them once we kind of realize the falsity or the very much wishful thinking, I suppose, and the incorrectness of some of the forms of analysis and some of the forms of struggle that have taken place, especially over the last decade. hundred years essentially um the key is to center the struggles of colonized peoples and build a movement that challenges imperialism as its roots anti-imperialism um support for national liberation national liberation at different scales in the imperial core especially in the united states is what is going to lead to um some sort of revolutionary situation here and will help support the struggle for liberation in the third world. And successful revolutionary struggle in the third world will essentially weaken the material basis for the labor aristocracy in the imperial core, and then a truly revolutionary situation can develop.

Joma: Absolutely. That was really good, which reminds me of that Rodney quote that you read earlier about the third world as being double potent. And this is also something that Samir Amin talked about in Unequal Development, which came out, I think, in 76, 1976. And so a few years later, but he essentially understood sort of the weak chain sort of thesis and where... the strength of capitalism and the strength of imperialism is at its weakest is actually where there's space and maneuvering room. And so seeing like the success of national liberation struggles in the global south or in social peripheral formations, improves the revolutionary situation in the imperial core as well. And this doesn't mean, oh, there's nothing to do for radicals, which we'll get into. So actually, I'm going to just go ahead and ask that question rather than that. So the second question is, what about colonized workers in the imperial core? Do they benefit from living in the US even as they face exploitation and oppression? So how do we situate that or wrestle with that?

Nate: So I think this quote from Brahma is pretty instructive here. He mentions how he was really inspired by the work of Sakai and settlers, as I previously mentioned. And then he kind of goes into an analysis that's very much influenced by Sakai's analysis and the analysis of many like-minded and conversational revolutionaries. But, quote, when I went from being a white college student to being a white factory worker, it was in some ways a lateral move or maybe a diagonal move from one middle class to another. The black or new African freedom movement is fundamentally a national liberation movement. The enemy of this movement is the U.S. settler state, a prison house of oppressed nations and nationalities. So class struggle here can't be simplified into a struggle between proletarians and capitalists. That's class reductionism. trying to simplify everything down to class against class, defined by centuries of national oppression. In fact, in this country, as in other settler states, the class structure is based upon and shaped by a highly racialized form of colonialism. African and native slaves were conscripted as the original proletariat of the U.S., while European workers were established as overseers and privileged worker elites. Ever since then, proletarian politics has been carried forward in large part by the Black Freedom Movement. It's so basically really what he's saying here is that the real proletarians are the oppressed nations and they're going to pursue a politics that is reflective of that. And they're not going to necessarily see themselves and white workers, the privileged strata, the settler people. uh class is having the same interest and they're not necessarily going to organize with them in the same way until the white working class the settler class the settler garrison uh as sakai puts it um uh operates differently and they're not necessarily so really um there is a difference in the way these things function. And if one upholds the analysis of, again, of Sakai and Brahma, um, the real true proletariat in the United States are colonized peoples, either those who have been here for a very long time, indigenous people, captive new African or black people, and many immigrant communities who are pushed here because of imperialism, who are pushed into the United States as the true proletarian undergirding of the state by imperialism.

Joma: Yeah, and I think folks should also revisit our episode on internal colonialism. And we talk about the Black Belt thesis, and we talk about these concepts. And so I think if you haven't listened to that, listen to that as well, because it's going to... it's going to bring this conversation or like flesh it out a lot better having that background. And I would also say like, yes, people like colonized people in America with three Ks are like experience different sorts of oppression and exploitation and But there's also a reason why so many people come to America with 3Ks. Like my mom, she was born and raised in Pampanga in the Philippines. And in 1986, the same year that Marcos was overthrown, she moved to New Mexico. And the irony, like New Mexico, but, and she moved there to, like, to be able to send remittances back home. And so there was a clear, like, It also wasn't her choice, but it was like there wasn't... This is a longer story of the history of de-development and what happens in the Global South, but when we were talking about with that Samir Amin piece about... The new agrarian question, when you're made surplus, you are forced abroad. And so that's why there's so many, if you know Filipinos, so many Filipinos are working in healthcare and stuff. And the number one export for the Philippines is the labor. um of the filipino people and it's like sending money back home and so like yes my mom is exploited but she's profit or she's like benefiting from the like the the like being structurally located in the imperial core to be able to then send money back money that is much uh like that goes a much farther way because of unequal exchange in the Philippines. And so the money that gets sent back home allows for our family in Pampanga to live much better than they could just working in the Philippines. And this is rooted in unequal exchange. It's rooted actually in that quote that we started with. I know, as always, there's lots of quotes, but from Lenin about how in England, I think he was talking about, or maybe it was Europe in general, but how it's not their own labor of that, like backs up their sort of privileged lives, but it's the, um, the, the masses, uh, in, in, in, in the colonies that make it possible. Uh, and so I just want to go back to like, yes, they're colonized people in America are experienced different oppressions. And also, and also like there, there's a reason why, because of the privileges of, uh, of an equal exchange where like almost ironic, like, like, it's like taking part in it to be able to send back to like make the best of a shitty situation of being in the, in the, in like on the like underside of, of capital.

Nate: Yeah, and I think we're going to see those fault lines and the potential of the true proletarians, if one is going to use that terminology, in terms of their organizing capacity, in terms of their connection to movements back home. In terms of, you know, if you look at the persecution of of migrants from Central America, from other parts of Latin America, some of which have really robust, victorious movements. Left wing antagonistic to empire governments in power, what sort of connections can be made in the face of increasing repression of these immigrant communities of the immigrant proletariat in the current moment?

Joma: And lastly, we're going to turn to our third and final question, and that is, what is the role of radicals in the North? If we understand the global South, the quote-unquote weak link, or what Rodney talked about as the double potency of the periphery, how can Northern workers support Southern struggles? Or to use Lenin's phrase, what is to be done then? Clearly, we're not saying to be defeatist, but there's some work that needs to be done.

Nate: Yeah, and I mean, as we've been specifically saying and explicitly saying all along, we cannot put northern workers all together as a monolith. That would be very reductionist to say. There's different interests, different forms of struggle, different organizational means, and different alliances and relationships that are going to happen between this different Class structures that exist in the imperial core in the so-called United States that are reflective of divisions on the international scale, depending on one's colonial relationship to imperialism and particular form of national oppression in particular basis for their national liberation struggle. Joma is going to have a different answer to this question than I will in a lot of different ways because Joma is connected to the national democratic movement in the Philippines. And the organizing work that Joma does is guided by that relationship to a anti-colonial struggle, anti-imperialist struggle. um in the philippines and in diaspora whereas mine as a member of the white oppressor nation is going to be um uh under the leadership of such struggles and finding ways of plugging into those struggles that don't impose upon them or pretend to be guiding them under the guise of multinationality or communist revolution, absent in understanding of the different structural positions. And so really, collectively though, in different ways, our role is to support national liberation movements within the imperial core, but of course in the global south, in the third world, and to abdicate for the liberation of oppressed nations. This means organizing against imperialism, challenging the policies of the imperial government in the United States, and building solidarity with movements that are actively working to de-link from the global capitalist system. It means fighting for the self-determination of colonized peoples within the United States. who are facing genocide, who are facing particular forms of exploitation, such as new African or black, indigenous and Chicano communities and other immigrant communities from the third world.

Joma: Yeah, that was excellently said. I think to synthesize that or to restate it, like our task is to support national liberation struggles and peripheral social formations or in the global south abroad. and then also to support internal colonies or oppressed nations within America with three Ks. And as you were saying, that's gonna not be in a leadership role for our white comrades. And so we have that two prong sort of task. And I wanted to read just really quickly two of the points of unity from the Anti-Imperialist Network. I believe in maybe our first episode, we read all 10, but I think it's really instructive and a good corrective to the analysis that was put forth in this Frizzo article, but also the analysis, as you were saying, Nate, of like all of the national formations of PSL, of CPSY, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so for point one, it says, the principal contradiction of our world is that between the exploited nations and the exploiters in the imperial core, or imperialism. And then point 10, solidarity cannot be simply symbolic. It must be material. It must be something we can hold in our hands. So I think there's a level of, end quote. So I think there's a, for the work that needs to be done, I think there's great work that AIN is actually doing as well, the Anti-Imperialist Network, of solidarity work, of supporting national liberation movements and struggles in the global south.

Nate: And I think to that point, too, we can look to the history of the KAK in Amsterdam and of... organizations in the so-called United States, such as the Weather Underground, such as the May 19th Communist Organization, such as the United Freedom Front, so many organizations that are unfortunately underspoken about, underrepresented, that were part of the clandestine armed struggle that operated in continuity with the Black National Liberation Struggles, Black Liberation Army, New African People's Organization, with Puerto Rican National Liberation Struggles, the Macheteros, other organizations, the FAUM. And I think, again, we went over the May 19th Communist Organization's principles of unity in, I believe it was our first episode, but again, And mirroring the Anti-Imperialist Network's statement, their first point of unity, principles of unity, is that we believe that the principal contradiction in the world today is between the national liberation struggles and U.S.-led imperialism. The struggle of oppressed nations for land, independence, and socialism leads the proletarian revolution worldwide. So we can see that this analysis isn't unique, isn't coming from an organization, but it's part of a broader anti-imperialist legacy that we can really call upon on and learn a lot from. That's unfortunately, again, very under-discussed in the impulse over the past 10 years of revolutionary left organizing to kind of learn more from like the new communist movement, which of course we can learn a lot from. But, you know, this sort of party building along this multinational communist lines really neglects the question of labor aristocracy and the colonial question.

Joma: Yeah, that's excellent. Could you read that quote again or that point of unity?

Nate: Sure. We believe that the principal contradiction in the world today is between the national liberation struggles and U.S.-led imperialism. The struggle of oppressed nations for land independence and socialism leads the proletarian revolution worldwide.

Joma: Yeah, I think that's a great place to end. But I think that's a really great point to drive home. So maybe that is a great place to end. I think. For those that haven't, I think listening to the internal colonialism episode and the ILA episode, which I think was like the student workers or like the student encampment episode. It is, yeah. Will complement this. But I think what's central and like I know I have like nerdy friends that are like love reading like labor theory of value, like these like Marxologists sort of stuff. But I think it's so central that we – seriously study and take seriously unequal exchange and an analysis that recognizes fundamentally the way that the world system is structured. And the ways that and what is the principal contradiction? It's not the arbitrary, like abstract northern worker, but writ large, but it's the exploiting nations under US led imperialism versus national liberation struggles. And this happens both like outside the territoriality of America with three Ks, but also within its its so called borders.

Nate: Absolutely. And I mean, to that point, too, there's plenty of political economic work. We've referenced some of it in this episode. But if you were all going to get into like some of the particularities of how wages in the global north are derived from unequal exchange and some of like the specific fine grained analysis that, again, some people get really nerdy about, which.

Joma: actually like I think that matters like that wasn't like I think like that's more interesting than the like sort of what did Marx really mean or say oh absolutely it's just that you know we would be going into like like kind of almost equations and things like that of

Nate: economics. But if you're interested, a more lay example that still kind of goes into these dynamics that's really incredible is this book with a preference by Argyri and Manuel, written though mostly by the collectivity of the KAK, the Communist Task Force in Amsterdam, which was an anti-imperialist armed struggle organization that materially supported national liberation movements in the Global South.

Joma: And when was this?

Nate: When they were active? They were active in the 1970s, 80s. You know, I believe like some of them managed to hold out until the early 90s. But then most of them are caught up that we know of. And the work is called Unequal Exchange and the Prospects of Socialism, which is published. We'll put a link in the show notes. The Anti-Imperialist Network, thankfully, published it in a web page format that But I believe Iskra Books is reissuing the book with new prefaces and obviously in a book form, which we're both very much looking forward to. And everyone should, I believe everyone who's interested and kind of shares this analysis would do really well to read. Oracle Lawson, who is probably the most public figure of the KAK, especially in the current moment. He gives a lot of interviews. He's been on a couple of podcasts. I know he's on Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, a number of other ones. But one that's a little bit more recent that's really interesting was on February 24th, 2023, I believe it was published by the podcast The D Program. um and it's episode 67 it's entitled are revolutions in the west impossible unequal exchange with torkel lawson so that one would be a really great one to listen to to hear it from one of the members of the khk himself who actually has published uh more interesting other political economic works kind of drawing upon the similar line of analysis in the in recent years

Joma: And I think what's nice about that episode, too, is that he gives like his background and like the background of the like actions that they all took. And so it's also serves as like a not just like the intellectual history about about unequal exchange, but also like the movement history, which I think is really important to not like dissociate or like to like not disembed from each other.

Nate: Yeah. And I guess, yeah. And so, yeah, we're going to put a lot of resources in the show notes that kind of help expand upon and deepen our analysis in this episode. But I mean, really to wrap up, this theory of the labor aristocracy, a third worldist theory of the labor aristocracy, is not a call to give up. It's actually a call to action. It means supporting national liberation abroad and fighting for self-determination at home. Obviously, those are

Joma: deeply interconnected especially if one has a world systemic analysis absolutely and so if you enjoyed this episode please share with folks and uh and keep up the good work because we've got lots of work to do and hopefully we'll be putting out a new episode soon and we won't be taking another month to put it out yeah pending on like california not burning down which like honestly if california um never mind all right never mind i'm in there