We have already seen how imperialism, or monopoly capitalism, is inseparably linked to the exploitation of oppressed nations, especially, as Lenin described it:
...the exploitation of colonies by a handful of ’Great’ Powers, increasingly transforms the ’civilized’ world into a parasite on the body of hundreds of millions in the uncivilized nations.[1]
Through the exploitation of peoples and nations beyond their own borders, the imperialists derive superprofits, i.e. profits over and above the normal capitalist profits. With a portion of these superprofits, the imperialists are able to bribe a stratum of the working class within the imperialist country, to act as bourgeois agents within the working class movement. This process was described by Lenin in “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism”:
The bourgeoisie of an imperialist ’Great’ Power can economically bribe the upper strata of its workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million. And how this little sop is divided among the labor ministers, ’labor representatives’ (remember Engels’ splendid analysis of the term), labor members of war industries committees, labor officials, workers belonging to narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is a secondary question.[2]
U.S. imperialism’s plunder of the world’s people and its enslavement of nations throughout the world and within its own borders have allowed it to bribe (in the way that Lenin described) the uppermost strata of the U.S. working class – using these “labor aristocrats” to attempt to keep the masses of workers divided and chained to bourgeois leadership and ideology.
In the U.S., the labor aristocracy is best defined as that white chauvinist, pro-imperialist upper-stratum of the labor movement. This bribed and tiny section of the working class includes the overwhelming majority of today’s labor officials. Their social base is primarily among the highly skilled white workers whose unions have set themselves up as “closed clubs” against the vast majority of unskilled, semi-skilled, unorganized and unemployed workers.
Protecting millions of dollars in profits made by the imperialists from wage differentials, these self-appointed “labor spokesmen” label any attempt of Black workers for equality as “divisive” to the labor movement and “threatening” to the white workers. Carrying on in the traitorous tradition of their predecessors like Samuel Gompers, the Meanys, Fitzsimmonses, Abels, Brennans and Woodcocks still refuse to organize the vast numbers of unorganized workers. Only 24% of all workers are organized into labor unions, and only 21% of Black workers are trade union members.[3]
The chauvinist policies of the labor aristocracy and their overall policy of class collaboration have never and do not now benefit the broad masses of white workers. White chauvinism, an ideology designed to rally the white workers to unquestioning acceptance (or active support) of the oppression of Blacks and other minorities, only serves to maintain divisions within the ranks of the workers and acts as a continual brake on the class struggle.
The fact that the masses of Black workers have remained unorganized or unequal once they are organized, has held back the fighting capacity of the entire labor movement. Most telling is the case of the Deep South, where white chauvinism is historically most deeply imbedded in the labor movement and in all walks of life.
In the South the working class is least organized, as shown by the following facts. The Deep South has historically been a haven for “runaway shops” and it is where workers are the least protected. It is in the Deep South where wages remain lower for the entire workforce – where international unions negotiate separate “southern contracts” with lower wages and standards for working conditions.
The masses of white workers face a crucial contradiction. They have advantages over Black workers who face wage differentials, discrimination, and complete lack of political rights. While the bourgeoisie often promotes competition for jobs among workers of different nationalities, the fundamental interest of the white workers, both short and long-run, lies with Black people in the fight against both the labor aristocracy and imperialism. Multinational class unity is a necessary condition for the emancipation of the working class as a whole. The white workers must choose between standing with their Black and minority brothers and sisters, or standing with the boss.
It is our task today, as representatives of the entire working class, to win the white workers away from the social-chauvinist policies of the trade union bureaucrats and revisionists and to stand side-by-side with the Black workers, not out of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment, but, as Marx pointed out, “as the first condition of their own emancipation.” The attempts of the imperialists and their lackeys in the working class to hold back the revolutionary movement of the working people can only be temporary. Lenin described the contradiction in this way:
On the one hand, there is the tendency of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists to convert a handful of very rich and privileged nations into ’eternal’ parasites on the body of the rest of mankind, to ’rest on the laurels’ of the exploitation of Negroes, Indians, etc., keeping them in subjection with the aid of the excellent weapons of extermination provided by modern militarism. On the other hand, there is the tendency of the masses, who are more oppressed than before and who bear the whole brunt of imperialist wars, to cast off this yoke and to overthrow the bourgeoisie. It is in the struggle between these two tendencies that the history of the labor movement will inevitably develop.[4]
The task of communists is also to combat any petit-bourgeois theories that aim the blow (in the fight against national oppression) at the white workers. These theories, such as the “white blindspot” theory, liquidate the struggle of the entire working class against imperialism, and reduce the struggle for national liberation to abstract “repudiation of white skin privilege.”
In the same way, narrow nationalism takes the class essence out of the national question. Painting the white workers as “devils” and enemies of Black people plays into the hands of the imperialists and labor aristocrats, who also seek to divide Black people from white workers.
[1] V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” Vol. 23)
[2] V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” (CW 23, p. 115).
[3] U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970 Report.
[4] V.I. Lenin, op. cit., p. 116.