By failing to recognize the role that settlers always play in anti-colonial struggle, instead leaving them to organize themselves spontaneously and reacting to it as it happens.

For sure but you seem to think we avoid working with settlers as a rule. It’s worth agitating people genuinely interested in understanding reality and changing it, and people pushed to their limits where revolutionary change is the only thing they are satisfied with. What I’m saying is it’s historically clear the base of settlers interested in our struggles has not seen significant motion through time (because they were just as reactionary during the height of exploitation against settler workers). That being said most settlers in Algeria fled, the ones that fought for Algeria earned their place. I expect in our conditions not many fleeing, but also not playing nice.

My contention was you calling socially necessary labor unproductive, when it clearly produces a social commodity. What your proposing reads like a vulgar workerism, almost like Nixonian “hard hat” fetishism, which seeks to devalue socially necessary labor as not being real work and to alienate them from the workers’ struggle.

Yeah this is no such case. I’m only using it insofar as it has been used in the literature. I’m not saying these workers are privileged above productive workers in the US, usually they are not since unions generally are paid significantly higher wages. If there’s actually a group I think tends more reactionary, it’s the production line workers in the AFL-CIO who practice Imperial workerism that obfuscates their relationship to their colleagues in Mexico and China. None of this is to dismiss or alienate US workers for their jobs, the system of their job economy is the problem. They must have some workerist thoughts if they think they are shunned from being Communists for their jobs.

Furthermore, my hypothesis is that debourgeoisification is occurring due to imperial decline, and that’s the source of inflation and the so-called housing “shortage” and the militarization of police and the chipping away of compromises reached by the labor movement when they chose to become collaborators in exchange for concessions etc etc

So-called shortage yes but remember that the overbuilt and expensive houses are already owned, and if Blackstone bought it, it means someone just profited of their speculation. It means somebody actually “owns” that value, and housing prices have always increased faster than inflation because Imperialists around the world (and 401ks, unions, and CPUSA) buy mortgage packages to park their money in investments outpacing inflation.

Police militarization has always been increasing since the 60s. I’ve posted the pic elsewhere in the thread but police and carceral spending increases every year outpacing inflation. This is a pre-existing trend. It looks to be more prevalent due to the firepower readily available to would be fighters in the streets as seen in Dallas during the first round of BLM protests. Though the trend has already been there for the likes of LAPD and NYPD.

Yes! If the chain of commodity production ended with dumping all commodities directly into the ocean then no value would be created.

Then it’s not socially necessary. The manner in which exchange occurs does not matter. Value is produced from the labor not the sales. The value being realized at exchange is not being argued with, but that doesn’t mean it was created by exchange. These are two different phenomena.

And as the empire enters decline, who gets to be a “settler” is winnowed away to preserve superprofits for a smaller and smaller cohort. That’s what the inflation is, that’s what the result of dedollarization will be, and instead of trying to analyze and predict where things are going you have consigned yourself purely to reacting to things after they happen.

By building a Nat Lib struggle for oppressed nations? Lmao? Just because I don’t seek to organize class enemies doesn’t mean I’m sitting around waiting for nothing. And no, just because a settler became a lumpen does not mean their nation has stopped occupying another nation, still a settler. Their national ties form their reactionary tendencies.

As you say, it is socially necessary labor and would still need to be done under Socialism.

Socialism would turn it into necessary labor (socialist planning, as opposed to Capitalist anarchy, this is the fundamental transition away from the prod-unprod relationship in Capitalism). It is not socially necessary labor under capitalism. It’s not making the economy bigger, it’s redirecting the economy. That being said I doubt the world would like to continue trading US call support for their food stuffs as in the world’s current arrangement.

And what about the lowest paid call center workers? They use literal prison labor in call centers, for pennies an hour. Are they petty bourgeoisie too?

Well the vast majority of them are not prisoners (but also prisoners are hired at minimum wage and the state steals the wages, so it’s not directly comparable to 3W labor). I source MIM(prisons), a prison movement, who says they are generally not near the means of production in prison. Prisoners’ interests are already being agitated for the national character of prison oppression. Prisoners receive 3W wages, so yes they are genuinely exploitated workers and agitating them for JDPON rule is much much easier than other wage workers in the US. I’m sure that MIM(p) considers themselves primarily lumpen-proletarians turned revolutionaries. Once again I have not claimed that call center workers or non-managerial unproductive work is petty Bourgeois, merely that it is semi-proletarian, which Lenin never really differentiates besides when he’s picking apart the various parts of the “middle classes”. Semi-proletarian only in the case that they are receiving super-profits in their wages (which all except prisoners, children, and migrant workers are), but they are not alone! Productive US minimum wage jobs in a global context are also super-profit spiked wages. If the aggregate worker has no internal or external super-exploitation, i.e. management and sales paid equal as individuals to production line workers, there would be no Semi-proletarians or labor aristocracy, and all would be Proletarian.

Semi-proletarians bring Revisionism into the movement in their focus on Economism. In the case of an Imperial Semi-proletariat, a Labor Aristocracy, these economic demands are born reactionary and reformist. (wage struggles for the super-exploited would be progressive in that they put pressure back on the labor aristocracy).

I need you to know that I’m calling all legal-wage productive and unproductive US labor a Semi-proletarian Labor Aristocracy. I’m not targeting call center workers particularly as opposed to any other US labor, but it’s a fact that a nearly entirely (non-direct producing) Semi-proletarian working class is not producing nearly as much as it consumes and this is a problem for such an economy if the ports were subject to blockade. Amazon workers can’t ship anything because barely any of it is made here. Call centers have no products to solicit and assist. This is not the same situation if China was blockaded. A sales team isn’t going to be able to transition to growing food or mining ore very quickly.

So! What would you call someone who can’t work in a factory because those jobs don’t exist after de-industrialization, and so they’re forced to work in a call center sweatshop?

Calling them sweatshops is certainly a stretch, averaging $17 compared to 60c in Haitian shops. De-industrialization is the reason why the US is becoming more bourg, its getting wealthier by simply buying more labor in the world.

Value only exists after it has been realized, the realization of value is necessary in the chain of commodity production.

Yes but is value created in exchange or socially necessary labor? These are definitions Marx used. The capitalists speculated on the productive labor, the unproductive labor helps the capitalist realize the profit, the products were already created. Shipping labor is productive in that it is necessary for products to be consumed. A corporation can’t expand their products by hiring advertisers and support lines, it only helps them indirectly recover past speculation. Productive labor is the expansion of capital.

There is certainly unproductive work being done in the US i.e. bullshit jobs, but to just relegate everyone who doesn’t work in the Sparks and Steam Factory as “unproductive” is mystification.

You’re applying an emotional or moral description to unproductive labor that does not exist in the literature. It’s a scientific term.

You are confusing the people who manage the exchange apparatus with the ones who they manage. No one operating the phone in the sweat shop manages anything.

In the sense that there are contractor firms, who speculate on call center labor through contracts rather than them being hired directly alongside productive labor, are producing value for their employer, but this is due to increased Bourgeois cooperation. However, we can abstract conglomerate firms and realize the same productive-unproductive relations remain hidden under layers of Bourgeois contracts. Again this does not matter besides the war strategy that if the US majority is not producing products or components of products, then the real productive capacity of the US is weaker than it looks. This is not a condemnation of the type of labor, it’s simply relaying how Capital treats such labor. Such work could definitely become socially necessary in a Socialist world system. Under Capitalism, it is labor that Capitalists do but now can pay it away, which distances them from the petty-bourgeoisie further.

So you can only ever react to conditions as they change. There’s a word for that~

An oppressed national who doesn’t expect their oppressors to change their ways because they never have historically unless driven by the force of we oppressed, right in their face? Every revolution needs to slice friend from foe and take control in existing conditions. For now settler workers are enemies. If we are able to advance to a stage overthrowing the land regime, where new contradictions are opened as old ones close, these workers can be won en masse.

When AIM and the Lakota radicals took over the hamlet town Wounded Knee in 1973, they declared the Independent Oglala Nation and held the town for 70 days. During this period they granted citizenship to anyone who wanted it, and most of the town stayed behind even after given the chance to flee, because they knew the army would create a bloodbath if all the settlers were out of the picture. This is the faith we have in settler workers, they will not initiate such acts but many will follow when placed in the middle of a revolutionary moment.

The first and most obvious is that it renders children and disabled people who can’t do “productive” work as bourgeois.

Those that can’t work are a strata of the lumpen-proletariat, what separates them is not having access to legal income and consumption (outside of social democracy crumbs). Disabled proletarians working unproductive roles still form an aggregate worker alongside their peers. Nothing in my statement disregards such individuals. Hellen Keller was a professional writer and lecturer, paid for her products, she was petty bourgeois.

The second and more insidious is how you seem to consider customer-facing work as unproductive.

Unproductive labor is all such labor that does not create surplus-value, but helps preserve or appropriate it. Marx:

Since the direct purpose and the actual product of capitalist production is surplus value, only such labour is productive, and only such an exerter of labour capacity is a productive worker, as directly produces surplus value. Hence only such labour is productive as is consumed directly in the production process for the purpose of valorising capital.

Call centers do not create surplus-value, they only help realize surplus-value, this is why they are unproductive. This is not a moral assessment, and it does not mean unproductive workers can’t be exploited. Productive and Unproductive workers form an abstract Aggregate or Combined Laborer which must produce surplus-value to be exploited. If unproductive labor pool is paid more than productive labor pool, then there must be super-profits being realized, such is the case of the Aggregate US Worker and the global proletariat. Such a relationship creates Semi-Proletarians and is the start of a Labor Aristocracy or bourgeois-proletariat.

The bourgeoisie are the owners of capital. They’re the investors, the proprietors, and the shareholders. In what world is someone in a call center sweatshop bourgeois?

I didn’t call them bourgeois, I said they are moving closer to the bourgeoisie than they are the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat, it’s a function of direction. Those that manage bourgeois apparatuses in exchange for wages are also petty-bourgeois. They work directly towards maintaining Bourgeois Rule as a system. I didn’t make this definition up. Nobody would ever deny that there are strata of workers wealthier than members of the bourgeoisie, this is due to decaying and rising strata as Capitalism develops.

Never in my life have I seen so many Americans turn on Israel.

I’m sure as much was said about the Apartheid Regime. Wake me when they turn on themselves.

I doubt you’d say a factory worker that becomes a call center worker is in a particularly bourgeoisifying position.

Much of our disagreement stems from the definition of petty Bourgeoisie (which is actually many different property relations).

Going from factory to call center is being distanced from the MOP. More and more Americans are being distanced from the MOP (moreso as it leaves the country). This means that these wages are coming from someone else’s proximity to the MOP as surplus value producers. This is a more intensely Bourgeois position (Bourgeois != Capitalist or productive property owners). Workers consuming surplus-value from other workers beyond their aggregate output (so we don’t count out unproductive work that directly aids productive work) are not exploited, and are Semi-proletarian in character. The Semi-Proletariat and Petty Bourgeoisie form the “middle classes”. While America has grown simultaneously to moving MOP outside of the borders, this means that the US population as a whole including the workforce is becoming “middle class” between the global south and the Imperialist Bourgeoisie (referred to by Putin as the “golden billion”). Moving away from laboring with the MOP but keeping the same wages is a move closer to the Bourgeoisie. Lenin and Mao both referred to teachers as petty Bourgeois even though there is no productive MOP involved, this is because they are paid with someone else’s labor to facilitate Bourgeois rule. Look at the Middle Class in Britain paper I posted in the thread.

The US absorbs more value than it produces, there is inflation if it does not consume it all at once (savings are a symptom of this). If anything is leftover, inflation. Which leads once again to the problem of Semi-proles valuing land speculation. Not all want to buy an inflating home, but the majority of them do, and this causes the rest to face that inflation through renting, or worse, buy into that system themselves to keep up. The problem is every union pension and retirement fund is speculating on that same system. Caught in the contradiction, the US workforce is reinforcing the settler land regime! Simple Economistic demands further reinforce that problem!

This is why housing/asset inflation is higher than CPI. Economism is always a dead end within an Imperialist economy.

This cycle has been in existence in this exact form since WW2, relative sizes and shares of the Imperial loot are changing but not qualitatively. Just because it crashes doesn’t mean it’s created qualitatively different class consciousness, because 99% of US workers don’t even acknowledge the existence of Labor Aristocracy.

Prices and Wages are products of class struggles. You are correct to point out that there are geo-political factors but then again, how many US workers are actively Russophobes, Sinophobes, and Zionists, the vast majority?

The bottom fifth of US workers have the most potential for committing class suicide, rather than organize them around keeping up with the top 4/5ths, we need to point out to them that those demands are a dead end and can only lead to a shuffling around of who is in the bottom. Ending the colonial system through force is our only option. This is good though, since that bottom fifth represents most food workers and shipping workers, this means they are in position to starve out the fascist bastion and defend the Nat Lib struggles who will be seizing territory from the US. I want you to know that we are much agreement about the potential of the bottom of US workers, what I want to get away from is copium that this segment is growing, it’s simply just not the case. Revolution will come from the minority of the minority. Don’t fear, the US is selling us its noose.

Wages have not significantly dropped. Staying in the $23 dollar range since the 70s including the tens of millions of immigrants since then + women working more and more (and men working less) and wages are still the same? What does that mean overall? As the white male workforce aged and retired, more white men were given high wage jobs that are nearly equivalent to 2 median incomes (like missile engineering) and women and POC took the old jobs (productive factory, shipping, teaching, nursing). Incomes for Americans overall stayed consistent. On a global level $20 dollars an hour is humongous! Cost of living is actually not the cause of these wages, as most Proletarian global South cities are just as expensive as American ones and some are more expensive than NYC. Mexico, Canada, and the US have a merged market due to NAFTA, but only dead labor can travel freely, living labor is blocked by the border. What does this create? A free trade zone where workers doing the same work make $3 one one side of a deadly border, and $20 on the other. Why should we expect that US workers should be getting $25 by the 90s, $35 by now? Maintaining wealth while costs of much of personal consumption is actually dropping in real dollars (compare Nintendo consoles or appliances to the 90s). In the graph you show wages were the lowest in the 90s, where was this debourging then? The fact is that if white men were able to continue segregating women and POC, average wages still would have climbed.

But there is also the factor that average wage is being held down by immigrants, POC, and women (particularly immigrant women POC). Median white male wages have stagnated since the 70s, but the stratification is predominantly above the median, as in the rich got richer while the poor stayed the same.

The problem with centering on wages like this is that US wages have maintained global dominance while even more are getting absurd incomes. Just because tech workers are so rich does not mean GM workers have suddenly become exploited.

Again CoL is fairly comparable globally, US wages are rich everywhere, and US minimum wage is wealthier than most petty boojies in the global south, which is why they are willing to pack up and move here.

The position of US workers is high, them getting knocked off their pedestal will look a lot more drastic than this, like for instance minimum wage getting outlawed or the border blowing wide open (good tbh), or perhaps anti-peonage laws getting ripped away. Then I’d be concerned with them, but likely more concerned of them if the movement is not already approaching statehood ala (Independent Oglala Nation, Neo-Zapatistas, Panther Oakland).

The median wage of white men dropping because white women are working now does not upset me, and I would not run to white men and tell them they should be angry their monopoly on strong wages is ending. This however doesn’t solve that USians in aggregate have a monopoly on high wages (as is the case of Imperialism). And if we look at that chart, let’s say it dropped from 50k to 40k, this is not total compensation and benefits have increased since the 70s as the government props up housing speculation as a rule, retirement funds are growing in the stock market, and healthcare benefits are high. The real total compensation position of white men has not drastically changed since the 70s.

This also ignores that over half of US labor is genuinely unproductive white-collar work. 16% of jobs are factory work, then there is shipping work, and food producing work. I would consider people going from overpaid factory workers to white-collar work a bourgeois-ifying transition (have you seen the noise of this so-called intelligentsia on online?). Graph ends in 2000 but apparently it is up to 62% in 2022.

“Savings savings savings” you say, and yet the rate of savings has been declining since the 60s and right now is on par with the period just before the 2008 financial crash. Savings are not an explanation for the inflation we are seeing and this is another contradiction to your claims: if savings are a source of inflation, and savings are down, where is the inflation coming from? Is it only coming from wage increases like is being claimed by bourgeois economists? I’m skeptical, and so I’m hypothesizing that the inflation is geopolitical.

I already pointed out that inflation, the value of the dollar, compared to 2019 is due to pandemics slowing shipping down, you literally had to pay for more labor for the same amount of goods shipped --> increased costs of goods. Sanctions also increase shipping costs --> increased costs of goods. The bulk of American workers are getting wealthier, thus inflation for even things like apples and watermelon, because there are more people who will spend that money. The struggle between US workers and US petty bourgs over who gets a bigger share of Imperialism does nothing to advance Communism. Savings rate propaganda induced by bourgeois media promotes Economistic organizing, again 6 figure workers spending their full monthly paycheck, whether to rents, social security and retirement funds (savings but not called savings), student/mortgage/consumer loans (others’ savings), gambling/gatcha/collecting, “investing” in bubbles (housing, crypto, Tesla stock, “retail” investment has been growing ala “roaring 20s”), or doordash for every meal does not mean these workers are going to be any more interested in proletarian revolution.

And yet, the state is grappling with inflation despite being the least susceptible state to inflation. Does this not indicate a change?

Inflation rates in the US have never been more stable than the last 3 decades.

Do you think the bourgeois want a high interest rate environment? Do you think they want the global South to turn to other countries for loans?

Interest rates are still historically low. Many loans were forgiven so the recent rise in interest rates seeks to slow down borrowing that the pandemic induced to absorb stimmy checks. It’s all about inducing circulation or slowing it down when the bourgs want to.

One thing that stood out to me was the demands for an end to understaffing, which necessarily means hiring more people. It’s not quite internationalism, no, but it does benefit the internally colonized people who could gain employment instead of being forced to fill the ranks of the gig economy and reserve army of unemployed workers.

This is not a new demand, it’s consistent with Imperialist union activity historically. This type of reform still works on behalf of Imperialism to delay national liberation, it’s certainly a contradiction we intend to exploit where available to us, though this requires we have an even stronger anti-Colonial line since making more oppressed nation bourgs adds troubling revisionisms to the movement.

they only call for Israelis to be released when they should be calling for a hostage exchange and acknowledge that the Zionists have been taking Palestinians hostage by the thousands into detention centers, but they aren’t just silently supporting Israel either.

So it’s a bourgeois humanist position, without a hint of Marxism, and covering the true nature of Zionism and US labor’s role in occupation and genocide? Color me surprised, this is nothing to celebrate, we’ve seen it before:

In fact, the ILWU has a long history of being interested in and supportive of Palestinian liberation going back decades because of their internationalist character that was cultivated during the anti-apartheid struggle against South Africa.

Don’t downplay the role of conditional solidarity in shaping the demands of a Decolonization struggle. The form of the ANC now can’t be separated from the way in which Apartheid “ended” (who owns the land and bread?). The same goes for these “anti-Zionist”-but-nowhere-anti-Zionist gestures that push blame on the Resistance and deny the reality of settler-Colonialism in Palestine.

Yet, you’re underestimating the importance of public demonstration and should recognize that even non-destructive acts still act as propaganda for further radical action.

This must have been said during every US involved war ever. I think such acts result because such bloodshed exists, before the bloodshed, none of them cared. After the bloodshed, they’ll return to not caring. Until white workers are climbing over each other to commit class-suicide on behalf of revolution, I’ll have little reason to value their solidarity.

Ireland is a semi-occupied nation who is in alliance with Imperialists. The struggle in the north of the nation is their one progressive character. If they are able to commit class suicide, the international proletariat will be able to help Ireland rid itself of Britain.

From MIM Theory 1:

[2.10] Combating Common Wishful Thinking on the White Working Class

It is tempting to look for the slightest tinge of proletarian class interest among that section of the Amerikan nation (the white working class) that participates in production and in the circulation of commodities, as well as in the realization of the social surplus value through the purchasing of commodities for their own consumption.

It is tempting to look for the possibilities of an irreversible, precipitous decline in the economic status of certain strata in the vast Amerikan settler formation. The beleaguered, exploited proletariat residing in the internal colonies of Amerika could benefit from a little help, or at least neutrality, from the middle classes—the petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy—during the insurrection/civil war and the preparatory years.

Settler radicals (meaning radicals descended from Europeans settling North Amerika)—from the Trots to some Maoists—have long refused to face the fact that the labor aristocracy is not only not a neutral force, but, if class interests rest on economic interests, not even mildly exploited. To paraphrase Lenin: the petty-bourgeois revolutionaries take the conditions for their own liberation to be the universal demands of mankind.

In terms of party-building this kind of thinking sometimes boils down to promoting left-economist notions of immediate gratification, such as, “Nuke war tomorrow? Oh shit, where do I sign up?” Such an understanding avoids the international class analysis necessary to best promote revolution.

To truly take the stand of the international proletariat means to put our analysis in the spot where the oppressed exist: with no choices available but further oppression—or rebellion. We can strive to do this even during the periods when the masses actually standing in that spot have not yet realized their strength. For a revolutionary hanging by his/her thumbs in a cold Peruvian prison waiting for the flames to hit, Amerika must look like one huge, undifferentiated mass of class enemies.

That’s from the outside of this toilet. Inside it, we must make the differentiation and coldly separate friend from foe. The friends will throw themselves into the flames to annihilate the flame-throwers. The foes will stand a little distance apart at the last moment. As groups, this will be decided, in the final analysis, by the historical group interest.

In the beginning, we decide what groups are worth our efforts building for those decisive moments. If there is even a faint hope that the Amerikan “working class” is waiting in the wings for revolution, then it would make sense to organize for the demands of this group. (MIM seeks to organize amongst all groups at all times, but it only organizes for the demands of the oppressed, not the oppressors.)

MIM holds that, at the present, the majority of white workers in this country—skilled workers, trade unionists, paper-pushers, etc.—do not represent a revolutionary class. They do not create surplus value as much as reapportion the surplus which results from superexploitation of the Third World and oppressed internal nations. They are not prepared to abandon bourgeois aspirations and mainly high-paying jobs to drop everything for the good of the international proletariat.(1)

“Ah ha!” exclaims the desperately vacillating nature of the petty-bourgeois revolutionary. “Just wait until they lose those high-paying jobs and become prepared to abandon their bourgeois aspirations! Then they shall be friends!”

The cold-hearted Maoist replies, “Dream on, by that point what’s left of them shall still be white-collar fascists defending a starving fortress Amerika and firing bullets at Third World Maoist armies, while eating old Spam and lining up to perish for the ‘right’ of their toxic-mutated children to ‘live free or die!’”

These settlers are perfectly willing to fight and die for the continued ability of their group to experience the taste of that rich and famous, completely corrupted, seemingly immortal lifestyle.

An article by Lenin, who died before neocolonialism really pumped up the imperialist alliances of the labor aristocracy and expanded the “shift in class relations,” still says it well:

The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a larger body of personal servants and workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods: all the main arterial industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and semimanufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa… We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western states, a European federation of Great Powers which, so far from forwarding the cause of world civilization, might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy.(2)

The above quote was from Hobson, a “social-liberal" whom Lenin found useful to quote, lest he be disbelieved. To would-be communist organizers of the labor aristocracy, Lenin exclaimed: “At the present time, you are fawning on the opportunists, who are alien to the proletariat as a class, who are the servants, the agents of the bourgeoisie and the vehicles of its influence, and unless the labor movement rids itself of them, it will remain a bourgeois labor movement."(3)

Most white workers in this country are not prepared to ditch bourgeois aspirations and high-paying jobs to drop everything for the good of the international proletariat.

Notes:

1. What is MIM pamphlet p. 8.
2. I.V. Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Moscow Progress Publishers, 1979, p. 9.
3. Ibid, p. 11.

If that comes with higher wages then the worker can keep up with inflation and no one notices much other than the fact that their savings literally lose value over time

Inflation is mostly due to higher wages, and savings. Savings are reinvested by banks and turned into new constant and variable capital (hiring more workers). It can be turned into new consumption (like video games, social media, more advertising). It can be turned into student loans, and mortgages (if there is a surplus of money-capital all of these things will get more expensive relative the the unit of money), and “gentrification” re-developments or new suburban developments. Your savings become a smaller share of the MOP because they got invested elsewhere and more things were made or labor paid because of it! Simultaneously capital will be exported, mostly to China, where it is used to decrease the prices of expensive goods like video game consoles and microwaves (which is why they have gotten cheaper since the 80s/90s). The increase in the prices of other goods are due to the increases of incomes whether directly or indirectly through cheaper living and therefore savings, this causes the propertied classes to raise prices to capture these excess monies in savings so they can maintain their relative share of ownership. The bourgeoisie does not want dollars sitting around, they want them put into motion so they can be accumulated. This means increased consumption, and consumption remains high. USians consume way more than the global south citizens do.

Though again, buying lots of things and not saving money doesn’t mean your life is actually getting worse! The “60 percent of USians are paycheck to paycheck” talking point in media obfuscates that the median US worker makes hundreds of thousands a year, that 60% must include people doing better than the median worker.

All that said, family incomes have not changed beyond historical levels for the bottom 20%, all other brackets are growing, and there are more families.

We are now seeing inflation actually outpace workers, they are not just making more to pay their higher bills and it’s lead to the recent labor upsurge.

The recent “labor upsurge” was pandemic related, just as inflation was largely pandemic related due to transportation delays and more spending per-worker on minimal safety precautions (with some level of “greed-flation” but again that’s just opportunism on behalf of the bourgs).

You say “capital exports bring down the prices of goods” yet we are also talking about conditions of strong inflation. Is this not a contradiction? Does this not indicate that capital exports are falling, and that demand for USD is falling? You say nothing has changed, but despite the harshest sanctions regime in history we have seen Russia’s economy continue to grow! We are seeing nations make deals with each other in national currencies, totally bypassing USD. We are seeing alternatives to the World Bank and IMF, which offer loans in currencies other than USD.

None of this really effects US workers, besides the tech sector and the housing bubble (this means less workers able to speculate on land) which was being supplied by Counter-revolutionary Russian Bourgs who parked their money in the US for these “industries”. This does explain some of the attention TikTok is getting as US-based companies are losing their technology monopolies. However, conditions for Imperialism are still better than when the USSR existed. Capital exports of specific commodities are decreased when that specific commodity making capital is exported, but it need not be existing machines. GM mostly built new machines in their transition to Mexico and the US factories make largely high end cars and trucks now, while Mexicans make the lower end vehicles which are sold to US GM workers lol. Surplus-Capital either finds new industries or expands elsewhere, but this could easily be to an underdeveloped sector in an Imperialist ally (such as Germany, South Korea). You’re right that if not enough surplus-capital finds a home, that the value of dollars goes down, this is effected by dollar demand but also capital exports can take the form of bombs, ultimately the destruction of capital, which allows for demand to be re-established. New sources of consumption counter-balance inflation, essentially, which is why the US is the least susceptible state to inflation.

This is not universal, obviously. The wages of managers, cops, so-called skilled laborers, bureaucrats, etc have risen in pace with inflation. We have seen some workers keep up and other workers fall behind, splitting off those workers and debourgeoisifying them as they fail to save and fail to attain property and fail to get “ahead.” I’m not sure why you’re insisting this isn’t happening.

This is due to what I said above, that people are saving money, so loans get more expensive because there is a surplus of capital to be turned into loans (they make bigger loans because they can find people to take them). This makes college and housing more expensive. Local landlord regimes (city-government “deep states”) subsidize development to attract higher wage sectors like tech so they can realize more real-estate capital in the form of land-values and rents. So you’re right that wage differentiation has something to do with cost increases, but again 4/5th of USian incomes are increasing yoy, overall the bulk is on the upswing. You must be reading too much Hudson to think that the dollar system itself is the source of inflation, no, it’s actually “unequal exchange” and the increased wages it brings.

What productive assets do they own? I think they’re a special protected class created by the State, and while their class interests align with business owners and independent farmers they are still distinct and it’s worth recognizing it.

The petty-bourgeoisie need not actually own productive assets, this is an overly mechanical analysis of petty bourg classes. Lenin and Mao referred to academics, teachers, doctors, and nurses to be petty-bourgeoisie, see the source in my other comment on the Middle Classes in Britain. The petty-bourgeoisie is simply non-capitalists and non-proletarians converging into a “middle strata”.

We’ve also seen the contract fights have not focused on wages. While the companies have been throwing record wages at workers the contracts still get rejected because what they actually want is time away from work and time where they can’t be scheduled and an end to understaffing, or like you say, workers’ health and wellness.

To a certain extent, working hours struggles are progressive, to another extent, they are simply wage struggles hidden behind math. In an Imperial economy where wages are already built from stolen labor of the global proletariat, cutting hours in Imperialist states comes at the expense of the global proletariat, it’s ultimately reactionary organizing unless it doubles with demands of a shorter working day globally for all workers, i.e. proletarian internationalism.

We see this was not the case…

But we are also seeing union locals organizing against the Zionist genocide. That’s huge! The labor upsurge might be gaining a political character and you seem to be ignoring it in favor of pessimism. The union leadership is still in lockstep with the Democrats, and as long as that is the case they will hit those dead ends, but if I’m right and the rank-and-file are being debourgeoisified then we are going to either see the leadership change or we’ll see the NLRB declared unconstitutional and unions will have to go back to illegal strikes.

Where? Outside of the walk-outs of academics who some happened to be in the UAW, there hasn’t been any anti-Imperialist actions by US unions. They make statements but my dog could make just as valuable of a statement if she could write. Opportunist gonna opportunist, this isn’t a sign of anything lasting, if it was they’d be seizing land and handing them over to the Indigenous peoples as we speak. UAW would divest from weapons manufacturing and Israeli settlements. The academic protesters only jumped in when their students were getting beat up by pigs, again a valiant action, but ultimately has not progressed the struggle. The youth are always worth agitating but it’s important they can’t be lead by Opportunists in the union movement and academic circles. As seen Liberals also protest, doesn’t mean Liberals or union-locals have developed more class consciousness beyond white guilt for being in-Empire.

Nothing novel has occurred between this moment and the anti-Vietnam days besides much less whites caring because they successfully got the draft paused indefinitely. When union workers start destroying weapons manufacturing equipment I’ll have to change my mind, but that seems to be far from where we are, and the “toughest actions” have been climbing (office, not factory) buildings and tagging them with paint.

Nothing has fundamentally changed from the 60s, assimilation (which is paid for by Imperial value transfers) of oppressed nations is dual education and incarceration, both have increased over time, in dialectic. Women have been participating in wage labor more and more but that looks to have reached a relative peak.

You seem to think inflation is anything other than more wages than can be spent or reinvested (if in savings banks and credit unions). Inflation in the US is due to super-profits added to wages. An exploited Proletariat literally cannot save money, and globally luxury spending does not mean they are exploited!

My reading tells me the export of surplus capital refers to the export of productive machines, not the literal national currency.

Example: Sterling system. Britain exported capital to its own settlements in Canada and Australia. Britain was practicing “unequal exchange” (violent trade monopoly) with India, paying off their domestic workers with it, and then sending settlers to collect more resources in the colonies. Also, Lenin called French Imperialism “usury Imperialism” because France was exporting literal currency in loans to Russia and other European states. Capital exports of “real machines” are mostly to other Imperialist states or military allies, or Socialist states brought into circumstantial trade deals (same as Lenin’s time with NEP), and not “backward” economic systems of semi-colonial, semi-feudal character as seen in former Spanish colonies, India, and Africa. France still performs “usury Imperialism” (coupon clipping) with French and Euro currencies.

Cops are petty booj, more cops means more petty booj.

The US is a more advanced British Empire + French Empire in one. It’s not a surprise since the US inherited every Imperial relationship the former great powers had!

I guess I’m just optimistic that the white working class has finally entered its own decling.

This is copium and you’re universalizing your position within the Settler economy. In my other post there’s a Polemic Against Settler “Maoism” that criticizes your line (this does not mean you are 100% wrong! It means you have some fundamental misunderstandings but you are in the right direction!). New class consciousness is due to the eugenic nature of settler society where productive, but unexploited economically due to Imperialism, workers were put into the disease gauntlet serving fascistic semi-proles and petty boojies who did not care for their well being.

Outside of Economistic practices focusing on wages and prices, the great thing this new wave has brought through the pandemic is organizing around workers’ health and wellness, as well as property abuses such as AI likenesses for performers. These are still material problems and the pandemic exposed them, but still this unions are hitting Economistic dead ends in organizing energy, still many workers are were permanently injured by the pandemic conditions and many are still getting sick with no protections. Union activity isn’t the end all be all of class consciousness, as seen in AFL’s history of making the bombs that kill people so they can have houses and cushy retirements.

And don’t pray for white conditions to worsen. Lenin railed against German comrades who were preoccupied with wages in Imperialist states. No strong party was developed during and after WW1 and when the “crunch” actually happened to workers obsessed with wages and inflation, they suited up to herd the “undesirables” into camps. My worry is that when whites start feeling real class struggle they’ll turn my people in prison into actual slaves if we don’t have the readiness for a violent opposition ala AIM and the BPP.

Why would an ideology obsessed with change want anything to do with one afraid of it?

People too often celebrate mid

No mainstream US leftist is worth the energy they consume

“The Childish Disease of the Left”

What a banger translation

There are two groups of people worth a damn in terms of politicking at them;

1. Those that have concrete conditions in favor of radical change (like say, a Black person whose not getting hired anywhere due to felony acquired as an impoverished teen). (Most exploited proletarians and poor peasants, nationally oppressed peoples)

2. Those that are genuinely curious to understand and overcome the conditions of our time. (People like Engels, Mao, and Castro who came from high privilege but dedicated themselves to science and humanity: Revolution).

Anyone else is not going to ask questions and look for answers until they see their Doom on the horizon, but it’s too late for them if no structures setup by the 2 groups above have been built.

What does that mean? Build with who you have right now, be ready to accept power when that third group has nowhere else to go.

Surplus capital is not a “libertarian thing”, it’s a Lenin thing, it’s the reason why capital is exported.

Where is the money going? Police, judicial, and carceral costs are increasing year over year. Capital is coming in from other Imperialist states and neo-Colonial outposts, which is fueling both housing construction and housing cost at the same time. There has never been more homes to workers in the US than right now.

And if you find my other post quoting Lenin, the petty bourgs are constantly being destroyed and refreshed, which is why the workers movement consistently gains new revisionist ideologies.

What I contend: The US middle classes have always been in this cycle, ya know many whites have struggles with drugs and drug incarceration (which has softened, drug use charges are getting lighter and lighter). De-Dollarization is still not affecting US workers, but also it’s greatly over-hyped. Surplus Capital will continue to be sent from all over the world to the US housing market and silicon valley.

Old homes and old appliances are still signs of total wealth growth, but also, new appliances have never been cheaper for USians and more people in the lower income brackets can afford them. Capital exports bring down the prices of goods. Car ownership is a luxury, it’s at 90+%, but also, the bottom 20% of population owns just 1% of cars:

This bottom 20% of USians is 60% Black/Indigenous/Latino. White poverty has been fairly consistent while poverty in other groups has been dropping in approach.

And just because someone is low income, doesn’t mean they have no wealth (housing speculation, owner-farmer).

It’s clear that wealth is increasing even though incomes are stagnating (because surplus money-capital arrives in the form of globally funded mortgages and historically low interest rates). Wages in 2020 are about as good (but way better for more people!) as the last 50 years, USians are not gonna have a lot of economic smoke for the Imperial regime.

Class consciousness is useless if it does not address labor aristocracy, and Communists have been saying “it’s getting worse!” since WW2, but it never has.

You should take a larger study of US economic conditions. We are in a much worse position of Economistic practices than WW1 Germans who Lenin railed against, I have linked the text in my other comment in the thread. These aren’t conditions to wait around for! Don’t wait for shit to get worse! There is revolutionary potential now! You have hundreds of national liberation struggles and 100 million oppressed nationals across Black/Indigenous people and Chicanos/Latinos. These struggles could have been turned into revolution in the 60s but revisionist Communists at that time said “wait we need white workers!”.

Did I mention that over half of the money spent on incarceration and policing (reaching a quarter trillion dollars every year, chart ends in 04, $261B spent in 2018) is wages for cops, guards, and judicial staff?

You say you are noticing a trend, I’m saying there’s always a small amount of losers in a massive petty booj economy, and this accounts for the trend you see, even though it has always been a factor, and adds new petty booj ideologies to workers movements, the state of the movement is evidence as such. The US is “overextended” (with few boots on the ground…), but what will happen when the US needs to ramp up war production to keep global wages low? Another boost in wages and carrot sticks of Opportunism so unions take war contracts (like they are doing right now making bombs that drop in Gaza). The US was able to “defeat Communism” through the height of anti-Imperial consciousness in the 70s, don’t hold your breath that movements that haven’t changed since then will be any different in the future.

It’s important to get across that a worker can go from high income ($150k) to low income ($12k, minimum wage), but actually double down on their bourgeois character because they started a business. From Semi-proletarian to Petty Bourg proper. Their total wealth would not have changed.

you’re right, the problem is that militarized identity politics known as “whiteness”

that being said idpol is a symptom of a deeper rot (labor aristocracy)

Family size decreased because more households were created (i.e. people moved out sooner, less multi-generational households). USian consumption has never decreased. Women were not forced to work, work became more available to them and then at a certain point it became a necessity for white women to work for white households to stay competitive and maintain segregation, women of other backgrounds were already working wage labor. Also birthrates are declining in Imperialist nations mostly due to policies that cut down teen parenthood (increased bodily autonomy, contraceptives and sex education, more access to higher education, more things to consume as opposed to raising children).

“afford childcare”: More and more USians do not live with family or support systems that assist in child-rearing, this is due to their ability not to. Childcare costs a lot in the US because it costs a lot to hire Americans to do anything (globally high wages!). These economic dynamics in reproductive relations are experienced broadly in all Imperialist societies. It’s a matter of class struggle that some other Imperialist states have subsidized childcare (the US does too, through tax breaks and public education, it just sucks). On a global level, it’s very privileged to pay someone to watch your kids, just because it costs a significant chunk of paychecks doesn’t mean it isn’t historically a bourgeois privilege, and less non-white women are forced to take waged domestic labor up since more jobs are available elsewhere. BTW, inflation for USD is due to a surplus of capital in the country, which is turned into novel industries (Hollywood, Malls, Amazon shopping, Silicon Valley, new cars, new guns), housing speculation, and “sin-taxes” (gambling, drugs, lootboxes). USD inflation is the result of the “Clipping Coupons” part of Imperialism.

No legal US working relationship outside of “customary agriculture” (migrant/child exploitation) is at exploitation level wages. Minimum wage is above Chinese factory wages, you’re going to need to see people getting 2-4 dollars before regular exploitation hits. Super-exploitation is the 60 cent wages seen in Haiti.

White men have been leaving the labor force since the 50s. Black men have been leaving too, but for different reasons, in different directions. This points to an increase in bourgeois white men.

“Cost of living” is an obfuscation. Poor Brazilian workers do not live in Favelas because their cost of living is lower, but that their wages are tiny so they can’t afford a well constructed home:

Women entering workforce + tens of millions of immigrants + not counting benefits = average wage stagnating while total wealth increases.

losing 3 dollars from 24 dollars to 21 dollars since 1970 when a good union factory job in Mexico (a tariff-free zone for the US market) is 3 dollars total, I’m suspicious in this “debourgeoisification” angle.

White Americans are being debourgeoisified and kicked back down the class ladder into the rest of the working class

Not true, the petty-bourgeoisie and semi-proletariat is always being decommissioned in one area and rebuilt in another, as such is the nature of boom-bust. Incomes for USian workers has been increasing for 4/5ths of the population since WW2. Minimum wage in the US is over twice Mexican industrial wages (and these are good union jobs). Exploitation wages (surplus-value extraction) is practically illegal for most wage work in the US (exceptions exist for undocumented and child labor in the agricultural sector, a tip when reading laws is to look for “customary hiring practices”). There is “cycling” and “shuffling” of property and access to means of production within the white “nation”, but overall it is getting richer yoy.