Zak Cope - Divided World Divided Class: Global Political Economy and the Stratification of Labour Under Capitalism

Contents

Preface

In Belfast, where I have lived all my life, there is a saying you cant eat a flag for breakfast. Particularly as it is used by the social democratic and liberal left, this saying is supposed to demonstrate axiomatically that the national question in Ireland (that is, whether Ireland is to form a united and sovereign nation or whether it is to be ruled in whole or in part from Britain) is entirely distinct from purely economic struggles over income, wages and working conditions and, furthermore, that nationalist politics, whether Irish or British in orientation, are a malign distraction from the common interests of the working class in these same bread and butter issues.

In truth, however, the saying has been little more than a folksy rationalisation and justification for firmly Unionist, British nationalist politics with a left veneer. The ethnically segregated and segmented workforce in Northern Ireland has traditionally been dominated economically, politically and organizationally by a Protestant and Unionist working class. Relative to its Catholic counterpart, this population historically occupied all of the best jobs with the highest wages, lived in better houses, attended better schools and could count on better life opportunities as a result. Most significantly, the Protestant working class, of British settler-colonial descent, could rely upon a political dispensation which the disenfranchised, gerrymandered and oppressed Catholic working class could not. Thus ignoring or deliberately obscuring how national politics have impacted the conditions of working-class life in Northern Ireland meant (and still means) to adopt a not-so-implicit British nationalist frame of reference.

The present work is a study in the politics of class within the capitalist world system. It examines, on a historical basis, power struggles surrounding the distribution of socially-created wealth and the relations of production which determine the same. Specifically, it is an attempt to explain and relate: () the enrichment of the working class of the core, metropolitan or First World nations within capitalist social structures; () the massive and growing income disparity between the people living in advanced capitalist societies and those living in peripheral, economically extraverted or dependent capitalist societies; and () the widespread racism, ethnic chauvinism and xenophobia pervading First World society today. In doing so, we hope to elucidate both how issues of class shape the national question (the boundaries of national self-determination in any given case) and, also, how nationality has come to impact class relations on a world scale.

The introduction of the present work relates the concepts of class, nation and race under capitalism, concentrating in particular on addressing the connection between racism and colonialism. It also clarifies the meaning of those terms used throughout the book that are essential to scientific understanding of the present international class structure. Part I of the book considers the development of an ascendant section of the working class out of the unequal international relations formed within the capitalist system. Drawing on world system and dependency theory, it delineates certain stages of global capital accumulation. Corresponding to these stages is a dynamic ordering of the international economy into a core and a periphery and the dissemination of popular ideologies of elitist supremacism in the former. Establishing as fact the embourgeoisement of the working populations of the rich countries, we argue that these populations have become materially accustomed to accepting the capitalist system and those forms of national chauvinism created in the course of its global expansion. Chapter argues that during the initial mercantile stage of capital accumulation, the transition to bourgeois hegemony at the core of the new world system is rendered relatively gradual and peaceful through the creation of a dependent periphery. It argues that a capitalist polity based on internal colonialism cultivates imperial chauvinism within the broad petty-bourgeois populace. Chapter argues that competitive capitalist industry in Europe brings colonialism in its wake. In the colonial situation, European settlers, employers, soldiers and officials confront a perennially subjugated non-European population and racism is thereby encouraged. Chapter argues that monopoly capitalism necessitates imperialism which relies upon social chauvinism to function. This chapter elaborates on the historical origins of the labour aristocracy as a section of the (ineluctably international) proletariat provided with economic and political benefits that have helped secure its allegiance to the imperialist status quo . This chapter introduces the concept of social imperialism and examines its currency in the era of the First World War and the Second International Working Mens Association. The fourth chapter argues that the reconstitution of the imperialist system on the basis of the overall global hegemony of US-based monopoly capitalism after World War II requires state welfarism and consumerism in the core nations, thus fostering the ideology of First Worldism. This chapter details the economics of global imperialism and shows that after the Second World War the labour aristocracy is effectively nationalised, that is, the entire working class of the imperialist nations is subsumed into the richest fraction of the world petty bourgeoisie. This chapter also addresses how the increased economic significance of immigration to this stage of capital accumulation has been managed according to a mutual need on the part of monopoly capital and the labour aristocracy to maintain black and ethnic minorities in a state of marginality and low-wage conditions.

Part II of the book argues (in abstraction from the reality of institutional discrimination against immigrant and minority ethnic populations favouring white workers) that, in the context of the contemporary capitalist world system, little or no legal exploitation takes place within First World borders. Having established the global split in the working class as being the product of imperialism, this second section of the book measures the extent of that divide today by means of empirical investigation, specifically by operationalising concepts such as unequal exchange and capital export imperialism which purport to reveal the mechanics of global value-transfer. It provides both a means of measuring and an account of the super-wageswages supplemented by superprofitsthat the First World working class is in receipt of today. Using certain formulae, statistical data is consulted and an estimate of uncompensated SouthNorth value-transfer is presented. This section concludes with a critique of ostensibly left defenses of global wage differentials.

Divided World, Divided Class ends with a brief overview of the pro-imperialist politics of the labour aristocracy. In relation to the book as a whole, this section provides a broad political sociology of the labour aristocracy by way of historical example, concentrating on the political trajectory of the working class in Britain, the USA and Germany. The conclusion to this final section links the politics of the labour aristocracy to the growth of fascism and infers that a pro-imperialist working class may be both unable and unwilling to forestall it.