Yeah I agree. I also think that in terms of the US and the settler colonies it wasn’t until even the 70s and 80s with people like Fanon and Sakai really explaining why settlers and colonists will side with empire over the working class due to the material benefit from empire. While Settlers and Sakai definitely has some issues the description of labor aristocracy stuck with me and explained what I saw when I lived in the US.
The concept of a labor aristocracy existed with Lenin, but Fanon in particular delved into the psychology of nationalist revolt against colonialism and imperialism, and Sakai with why the US Empire in particular has a settler-garrison, essentially. For a more broad concept of the modern labor aristocracy, I like how Nkrumah describes it as exporting of the heightened contradictions of late-stage capitalism from core to periphery. It’s only really recently that conditions in the US Empire have begun to decay enough that the class interests of the working class there have become more genuinely aligned with the working classes abroad. Quantity into quality, etc. etc.
Yeah I agree. I also think that in terms of the US and the settler colonies it wasn’t until even the 70s and 80s with people like Fanon and Sakai really explaining why settlers and colonists will side with empire over the working class due to the material benefit from empire. While Settlers and Sakai definitely has some issues the description of labor aristocracy stuck with me and explained what I saw when I lived in the US.
The concept of a labor aristocracy existed with Lenin, but Fanon in particular delved into the psychology of nationalist revolt against colonialism and imperialism, and Sakai with why the US Empire in particular has a settler-garrison, essentially. For a more broad concept of the modern labor aristocracy, I like how Nkrumah describes it as exporting of the heightened contradictions of late-stage capitalism from core to periphery. It’s only really recently that conditions in the US Empire have begun to decay enough that the class interests of the working class there have become more genuinely aligned with the working classes abroad. Quantity into quality, etc. etc.