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These kids must be in a Maoist English dual immersion program. Good for them

/uj

I've never understood this because labor aristocracy has a simple, concise definition:

The labour aristocracy is that section of the international working class whose privileged position in the lucrative job markets opened up by imperialism guarantees its receipt of wages approaching or exceeding the per capita value created by the working class as a whole.

If you make more than (PPP 2007 USD) $1.50 / hour, or ~$250 / month, then congrats, you are in the minority of the world's workers, are getting paid more than the average price of labor power worldwide, and are technically part of the labor aristocracy, regardless of your ideology.

Doesn't seem like a great definition. Seems like it should be rooted in one's relationship to labor and capital rather than math. Some guy in Missouri living out of his car making sub-minimum wage as a waiter would qualify by the numbers, but it doesn't make sense to call him a labor aristocrat.
- I think the definition is decent but they cited the wrong statistic. The definition refers to being paid more than your fair share of the value created by all labor, not to being paid more than the average or median wage. The value created is higher than the wage though so his cutoff value isn't meaningful.
  Basically the definition is saying that labor aristocrats are people who are getting "cut in" on the profits of imperialism, their labor is being valued higher than the proportion of all value created that they contributed. So essentially if all labor was treated equally, capitalists would actually be losing money on labor aristocrats. I don't know where the actual line is but it's definitely higher than that.
  There still might be room for criticism of that concept, but it's not just based on income math
- The fact that the guy in Missouri even has a car already makes him richer than most global south workers. Poor people in the west can own a phone and a car. Poor people in the global south only dream of owning a phone and a car.
There's a book called How Capitalism Ends by a guy named Steve Paxton, it's that largely libbed up brand of trot brit socialism but it did have some good points interspersed, one in particular I'm thinking of here is an argument for making a distinction between a "technocracy" and the rest of the working class:
It's important to note that the technocracy are not excluded from the proletariat because they earn too much money, or because they enjoy a large degree of autonomy in their work. It is the effective (though incomplete) control they exercise over productive assets by virtue of their technical knowledge that separates them from the proletariat. They make largely autonomous decisions about how and where productive assets will be deployed, and the expert knowledge which gives them the ability to do so puts them in a different relationship to both the means of production and to the bourgeoisie than that of the proletarian. At the same time, they do not enjoy the full range of ownership rights over the assets they control – they cannot sell or bequeath them for example. This limitation sets them apart from the petty-bourgeoisie.
I kind of like this distinction in this context, might be more prudent than labor aristocrat in describing some folks
- That's the Professional Managerial Class for ye, guys, mere stewards of capital
Waiiiiit a sec, the value created =/= the wage, no?
So the line would definitely be higher than that.
- I'm not sure I follow your question, but capitalists don't pay the total value (IE wages + surplus value), they only pay wages, and there is an international average price of labor power, especially in this globalized world where capital and productive equipment can move freely between borders.
- This is not a value judgement. This is a bread and butter argument: global south workers are the primary source of surplus value in the 21st century. That is a fact outside of whatever label you want to give yourself.
  I recommend reading John Smith - Imperialism in the 21st century, Zak Cope - Divided world divided class, or for a more introductory book, Jason Hickle - The Divide.

The number I gave above is inflation adjusted. To be more specific showing the divide, these are the numbers from the ILO.

According to the ILO, after inflation adjustments, global north workers make on average ~11x more than global south workers. They're essentially working with capital and productive technology from the 21st century, but getting paid wages from the 1800s.

Inflation-adjusted Average Wage Rates for male workers in 2007
Monthly wage for OECD workers	$2,378
Monthly wage for non-OECD workers	$253
Hourly wage for OECD workers	$17
Hourly wage for non-OECD workers	$1.50
Factoral Difference between OECD and non-OECD wages	11
Median Global Hourly wage	$9.25

Something else happened other than the United States’ imperializing of other countries, because it’s been doing that for ages.
Besides repression and propaganda, the U.S. has historically had the easiest road from precarity to a comfortable living (at least for white people), even among imperial powers. So you have a carrot to go with the stick.
First you had the
for white settlers, then a generation after the closing of the frontier you had the New Deal, then the postwar economic boom, then the tech boom. People in any capitalist country can dream of striking it truly rich, but for most of U.S. history (again, at least for white folks) it was pretty easy to dream of landing in a spot where you're worried more about retirement and passing wealth along to your kids than you are about putting food on the table this week.
That situation can reasonably be described as a labor aristocracy, but of course a ton of U.S. workers never make it there, or get bounced out.

haha, yeah just like me fr fr nothing sus Ohio I'm rizzmaxing and youth pilled

Hell yeah, but can you not dox me next time?

We love our zoomer vanguard folks

Everyone on Hexbear is a liberal, except for me

There’s only one true leftist on hexbear, and we all have to share them
that can't be right, because everyone on hexbear is a liberal except for ME

i dont know how to word this well, but this meme feels kinda sus - the POC emojis with the white kids is classic trope to imply that any POC on a leftist forum are actually white kids LARPing, which feels kinda shitty in the context of Hexbear already having problems with POC folk feeling sidelined