Your gut is correct. The international left needs something to offer all workers, it’s idealist nonsense to expect that a Western left would ever be able to attract enough people to have leverage and use it to advance the position of the international working class without improving the situation for Western workers. That comment is grossly overgeneralizing the notion that imperialism incentivizes class collaborationism and false consciousness, which is true, but does not imply that anyone is better off by having a leftist movement that has nothing to offer to the people it’s trying to attract.

There are some good critiques of thirdworldism in this thread already, so I won’t add to them. But it really bothers me, how few people preface their comments with:“Yes, unequal exchange and superexploitation are real. Yes sometimes the working class in the imperial core benefits from them.”

Acknowledge the material reality first, then make your argument. Also using “we” and “here” as a synonym for westerners or US citizens, as if no one else was using this platform is problematic.

I’m not thirdworldist and do think the international working class does have common interests and should stand united, but it is important to realize that sometimes western workers behave like a worker aristocracy.

Don’t be like them avoid these errors. For example:

• When trade unions in the US support strict tariffs on China, because the bosses promise real hard, that then they’ll refrain from moving production offshore. Then those unions enter into an alliance with western capital and become complicit in exploitation.

• When German leftist organizations want to be seen as reasonable, and acceptable by the state to avoid persecution and keep the little institutional support they get, there is one single thing they know they need to do(and most do it): fail to be anti imperialist and instead support NATO and Israel unconditionally or at least conveniently remain “neutral” to put the interests of the workers “at home” first. In doing so they betray the international working class and become complicit in genocide.

• Wherever people say "Yes, we support [struggle abroad / struggle of racialized minorities], but people wouldn’t understand yet if we did something about it. So instead, let’s focuse on [struggle of privileged parts of western working class] first.

You’re part of the problem if you solely focus on improving conditions only in rich countries

This is an extremely simplistic view of the relationship between labor and capital.

First, this is not ultraleft. The ultraleft position is that all major governments (including the USSR, China and other AES) are actually bourgeois and imperialist and their people suffer from the same exploitation indistinguishable from those who are exploited in the imperial core, so their solution is that all leftists have to perform revolutionary defeatism within their own country (again, including the USSR, China and other AES) in order to overthrow their respective bourgeois regimes and come together internationally to enact communism on a global scale.

And as I have said, the comment you posted is also a very simplistic take on the matter.

We have to look at this from the perspective of revolutionary potential, in other words: does the working class in the Imperial Core have more, less or equal revolutionary potential as the working class in the Global South?

To dissect this question, we need to understand how the global economy works post-1971, after the vast export of their industrial capacity to the rest of the Global South while the US empire sustains itself as a global debtor (which is fundamentally different from the British empire, which was a global creditor).

The neoliberalized American economy since the 1970s has been propped up mostly by the so-called FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate - a terminology coined by the economist Michael Hudson) which are essentially non-productive sectors that do not produce real goods and services. This is a prominent feature of finance capitalism devouring industrial capitalism:

The strength of its currency is derived from real estate ownership (land value), stocks and bonds market, intellectual property rights and licensing, financial derivatives etc. Now, you might think all these are virtual and therefore the US dollar is worthless. But no, this is what the world (held under the gunpoint by the US empire) has decided to calculate their GDP and currency exchange rate, which then allows the US to wreck other economies in the Global South using the strength of its currency, maintaining dominance over them and essentially extorting free lunches from all over the world, as most of the real goods and services today are produced by the Global South countries.

In other words, the financial empire is more like a landlord who does not have to work for a single day but can get everything he wants simply through extracting rent and concession. The US empire is doing this on a global scale against other countries.

While the Imperial Core enjoys the benefits of cheap goods and services from the Global South, this does not mean that their working class truly benefits from it. Instead, their exploitation became a form of debt slavery. Wages are kept low so workers have to borrow money to sustain themselves, which transforms their class character into one of debtor.

This kind of financialized capitalism means that unlike the late 19th and early-mid 20th centry, which was dominated by industrial capital, the working class in the Imperial Core today has their labor tied to debt (mortgage, rent, credit cards, student loans, medical bills etc.) rather than to industrial productivity, which was a key argument from Marx that proletariat is a uniquely revolutionary class because being freed from the land under the feudal arrangement, the labor performed by the proletariat is now directly tied to industrial profit under capitalism. The capitalists had to rely on labor to compete with other capitalists in order to make profit.

It has been described that the Imperial Core today under finance capitalism is more like a neo-feudal society rather than the industrial capitalism of the previous centuries. And this is largely true: just like the serfs in the feudal era, whose labor was tied to their land, the working class in the Imperial Core today work bullshit jobs to earn money to pay off their debt, which is what was necessary to survive in the first place. The manufacturing and service sectors pale in comparison to the FIRE sector, as much has already been exported to the rest of the Global South (and especially against China).

I am already writing too long but to conclude very quickly: the working class in the Imperial Core does have diminished revolutionary potential, which means that not only do they have to fight for better working conditions etc., but also the defeat of the non-productive FIRE sectors within their own countries in order to free themselves and the world of debt slavery. It is more akin the transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism, but in reverse. And only then, will they have the true potential to seize the means of production.

In other words, working class in the Imperial Core cannot simply organize just for improving the benefits of their own, but also need to incorporate anti-imperialism into their core struggles (which includes performing revolutionary defeatism of their own imperialist government) in order to defeat finance capitalism (which is rooted in the Imperial Core), which would then allow the socialist movements across the Global South to rise up against their bourgeois regimes, and by doing so advancing socialism across the world.

EDIT: can’t believe I forgot to say about the Global South. The working class of the Global South today suffers from the opposite problem: a left wing government (revolutionary or democratically elected) is immediately wrecked by sanctions, currency depreciation, burdening debt overhead from both currency depreciation and capital flight, endless coups, economic hardship etc.

So, the fundamental nature of struggles between working class in the Imperial Core and the Global South is different, YET they are tied together by the principal contradiction of anti-imperialism. According to this admittedly shallow and underdeveloped understanding of the world, countering imperialism (whose main instrument is finance capital i.e. currency) would simultaneously disentangle the contradictions of BOTH the working class struggles of the Imperial Core and the Global South, and opening up the spaces for further revolutionary struggle against Capital. Once again Mao’s On Contradiction could prove very useful in the analysis here.

This isn’t true (migrant workers, prison labor, people hustling in general) unless they’re using a narrow definition of worker. Obviously, migrant workers who earn less than minimum wage and send money back to their families aren’t part of how the imperial core loot the Global South through unequal exchange. If anything, it’s the opposite. By transferring their inflated wage relative to the Global South back to the Global South, those migrant workers are doing reverse unequal exchange if anything. I don’t think I even need to go over prison labor where they more or less earn the same exact amount of USD as their Global South peers except they’re also stuck in a cage.

This is just baby’s first Third Worldism. Third Worldism has various inadequacies:

1. It doesn’t offer any form of praxis outside of “send money to orgs in the Global South.” There’s also “move to a Global South country where there is revolutionary potential” echoed by some except absolutely no one, certainly not a worker with actually existing revolutionary potential^TM wants to deal with your gringo sexpat ass. So, the only real form of praxis is raise money for Global South orgs.

2. It doesn’t really get into the heart of how the US is the global hegemon. Because in the end, it’s the US in particular and not the imperial core in general that is the global hegemon. Germany is absolutely part of the imperial core, but Germany also does as they’re fucking told by the US. Among Marxists, there’s a transnational vs national debate between people who see the bourgeoisie as having a transnational character that has moved beyond the nation-state and people who still see the bourgeoisie as rooted in their particular nation-state and who will use the nation-state to pursue their bourgeois interest. This was first expressed in Kautsky vs Lenin. Kautsky thought there was a superimperialism (this is different from how Hudson uses the term) where all the national bourgeoisie have more or less coalesced into a single oppressive class while Lenin thought the bourgeoisie still had a national character and will fight over territory that can be approximated as national self-interest. Imperial core vs Global South isn’t quite on the level of the bourgeoisie being transnational, but there’s a flattening where the US, France, Japan, and so on, despite having competing national interests, gets lumped together as “imperial core.”

3. It flattens and overvalorizes Global South workers. Not all Global South workers are equal. And among Global South workers, it’s not as simple as measuring revolutionary potential based on surplus value stolen. If that were the case, Haitian workers would’ve long since freed the Caribbean of neocolonialism and razed Paris to the ground for all the bullshit they’ve been through. Congolese workers would’ve long freed the entirety of Africa from the West. There’s the current state of political organization among workers. History is also important. Why is Burkina Faso a hotbed of revolutionary activity while Nigeria is ruled by a shameless Western puppet? This is Global South West African country vs Global South West African country where both countries get fucked by unequal exchange. Why have the Burkinabe rise up to the occasion while Nigerians seemingly have not? You can’t answer this question with third worldism.

Yeah it’s not like the failure of the working class in the West to organize somehow means the exploited third world gets to keep more of its wealth. There are problems with labor aristocracy in the West, but the solution to educate around global working class interests the way the capitalist class does.

I feel like this is less ultra left bs, although there’s some of that, but more creating a rationale for not being active in labor organizing. The West can’t do shit, the noble savages of the hinterlands will save us, so we can sit back and be snarky on the internet.

I doubt if Medicare-For-All got passed the American Bourgeois would be like “well we were holding back on the imperialism up till now, but since I gotta treat the core plebs a bit better I’m gonna ramp this shit up!”

They’re already not holding back.

no, handing the imperial core to the fascists will not help the global proletariat.

Before the imperial core can do anything good for the rest of the world, socialists need to be in charge of the imperial core. We get there by organizing workers here with the promise of improving their material conditions. Otherwise, we’ll lack the numbers and class consciousness to overcome the crumbling empire’s inevitable fascist death spasm.

where’s (the source for) that map saying a globally equal distribution of wealth would slightly raise the average in because it’s so unequal?

any fast food worker passes way more value of product through their hands than they’re paid.

This is the kind of sentiment that should be nested inside nuanced arguments that explain exactly how and why this conclusion was made and shared.

“Part of the problem” is some scold ass language. Asking people to just accept diminished quality of life and labor standards isn’t exactly going to win people to the cause. Depending on the person or circumstance or audience I’d engage with this person but the delivery, format, etc tells me this is much more “being right on the internet” than trying to be constructive and start dialog. Self-flagellating labor aristocrats aren’t going to topple capitalism no matter how hard they do it. If I was feeling especially petty I’d reply that the shame vector is a byproduct of western colonial christian moralism.

If the end goal of labor activism is just in your country? You aren’t helping workers elsewhere. This isn’t exactly hard to understand. But it doesn’t mean all efforts are inherently counterproductive because of who does it and where.

Again, I’d be willing to discuss this seriously with a person who wants a serious discussion. Not a person with an axe to grind on the internet who wraps inflammatory rhetoric around a nugget of truth. It’s lazy and I’m lazy so I’d probably just tune this person out. Better arguments about this exact concept can be read. Better faith actors can be engaged with.

This is just an argument against organizing, which is wrong inherently.

Edit to add: This isn’t to say that class colaboration should be supported, but that as always the struggle for better must be taken with an international, anti-imperialist stance. A pro-imperialism advocacy group should be opposed, sure, but proletarians in the global north are largely debtors and kept paralyzed, not quite revolutionary.

International opposition to Imperialism serves as the primary lever to push the American proletariat into revolutionary potential.

Sometimes. It’s essentially the same way why trade unions can sometimes be reactionary

E.g. I think UAW supports the tariffs against Chinese EVs. This improves the job security of American car workers but hurts Chinese car workers and companies which in turns reduces the ability of international working class to buy (cheap high quality) Chinese cars

I know a lot of unions nowadays with Boeing, Northrup Gromman, etc refuse to take any anti-war stances/actions because their priority is taking care of their missile builders, not the lives of non-Americans

While people in the Imperial core do benefit from imperialism to the extent that it makes them unrevolutionary, it doesn’t mean that making them worse off will make it any better outside the core.

Increasing income inequality in America doesn’t make third-world countries any less exploited. It just means more of their labour is going to the American bourgeoisie rather than the American worker. The only argument you can really make is American workers should be worse off because they benefit from exploitation. But that’s not a Marxist position, that’s a moral position. It’s a position that only seeks to punish people.

Regardless of whether American workers unfairly benefit from imperialism, I don’t like when children go hungry, I don’t like when LGBTQ+ folks are attacked, and I don’t like when people die because they can’t afford medication. Fighting for these things in America will not stop nor make worse the exploitation of the third-world.

Commies are rarely the ones saying “exploit foreign workers harder!”, they’re the ones saying “give the rich fuckers’ wealth to workers while ending imperialism!”.

I’m also not as pessimistic as many others - even if the redistribution of wealth alone didn’t make up for not-imperialism, I think removing the inefficiencies of capitalism would significantly improve conditions for all workers, globally.

Yeah, the person commenting needs to either touch grass (if American) or get an “ehhh, kinda sorta” if outside the imperial core. When you help in forming job unions or tenants unions and you got some reputation as a commie, you ultimately help the cause down the line. I’m out there trying to improve the conditions of people in even shittier spots than mine, whether that’s someone in a poorer, largely minority ghetto, or someone getting fucking genocided across the pond. You don’t win people over being a caricature of what some boomer makes of college students.