>> CB: I agree with your overall points. However, the main revolution that the whole world needs is in the US. Since, the US is the imperialist center of this epoch, a revolution here would give significant relief to the workers in the Third World. The only ones who can make a revolution in the US are the US masses. So, we US activists have the responsibility of focusing on making a revolution in the US, even if the potential for revolution is greater in the Third World. << Comment Having followed the thread on the labor aristocracy closely and portions imported to this list - (historic shift), has been cause to review my own thinking on this question and its numerous interactive issues. Over the course of the better part of 40 years my thinking about the concrete applicability of Lenin concepts of the "labor aristocracy" to American history and current events in our country has shifted repeatedly. The concept of an imperil bribery manifest amongst the mass of the oppressing people and sectors of the oppressed who live out their lives in the imperial centers has never shifted. This is most certainly a complex issue, which is why it is debated endlessly as the world around us ceaselessly changes. I do not mean to be a pinprick but desire to contribute to the discussion. I am not sure if the potential for revolution is greater in the Third World in this era that is increasingly dominated by non-banking financial institutions. I note the word "potential" and not as an escape hatch but as a serious comment on a world in flux - shift. Shift always hits the fan. Revolution today means some kind of economic communism and not just the political means to combat world bourgeois reaction. For instance I have been following events in Nepal and what is called the Maoist victory. Where does one go or what political and economic path is to be traveled after the overthrow of their ancient Monarchal form of bourgeois production relations? Nepal is a t hrow back to the past that allows one to look at the future and present - again, with fresh eyes. I am not sure if the potential for revolution is greater in the Third World in this era, although political upheaval is necessary and will take place if for no other reason than to realign the national and multinational state structures with the demands and polices of the debt driven economy or speculative capital writing the agenda for the world total capital. No matter who wins the political struggle in Nepal, globalization means one must craft a set of economic and political relations within the world wide productivity infrastructure. Man . . . I just don't know. What I do deeply feel is that the mass of American proletarians are not going to allow themselves to be reduced to the economic and political level of the workers and peasants of imperialism historic colonies. Their consciousness will not allow for this and by this is meant how they think things out and look at material relations in America rather than the former colonies. American workers have a consciousness of "rights" that evolved as our own history. This consciousness of "rights" and the "right" to economic stability is not based on the history of material relations in the colonies of imperialism. While a vast sector of American society daily measures themselves against the world proletariat, and are extremely glad not to have to live their lives out in some poverty stricken former colony, and have no interest in sinking to this economic, social and political level, these same Americans also measure themselves against the wealth of American itself and the vast array of commodities seeking purchasers on the self of American society. The issue deepens because 30% of the American working class - the workforce, is composed of temporary workers and are forced to live with their parents, children and neighbors to pay the rent. From the standpoint of the manual workers and peasants of Nepal, all of America is hopelessly bourgeois and we are most certainly bourgeois, but not hopeless. We are proletarian with our own stories. We are not exactly who we were yesterday and most certainly will be different tomorrow. Are we bribed relative to the rest of the world? Yes, . . . . without question and this is the same kind of bribery that seemed to exist between free labor and slave labor in our past. Bribery - a very real and material thing one pays the house note and rent with and buy food under the bourgeois order, did not mean that the free laborers of the mid and late 1800's did not face the political and military attacks of capital. My pension is more that what the average white workers in America makes working 40 hours a week. We must always describe stratification of the working class to make sense - more sense, to ourselves and others. Yes, the concept of the labor aristocracy is applicable to America. This has never really been disputed by any sector of American communism. The dispute - as best as I understand it, has been "what constitutes the labor aristocracy" and how is this interactive with the historical colonies of imperialism? Interesting subject. WL
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