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Does it harm the global proletariat to fight for improved conditions in the imperial core?
(hexbear.net)
Saw this comment on the commie side of TikTok. My gut tells me this is ultraleft bs, but perhaps my fellow hexbears can educate me on this discussion which I’m sure is not new.
I don’t see how a poor American on food stamps is responsible, even though a systematic analysis reveals that international superexploitation is a thing.
The American proletariat can and should organize in any case. I don’t see how Americans can build any sort of socialist movement if any organization at all is accused of being hypocritical.
I can't say I've ever heard that definition of value of labor power. I was under the impression that "value of labor power" meant the total value that a worker produces, part of which is appropriated by the capitalist as surplus value.
Why would capitalists pay these workers as much as, or more than, the value of their labor? That means you're getting zero or negative surplus value from them - in other words, the capitalist is either not making money or is actively losing money by employing them.
It's the definition Marx uses in Capital. The difference between value of labour power and the value of the products of labour is the source of surplus value. Marx himself invented the category of labour power; earlier economists thought that the employer buys labour.
First off so they can buy the commodities and avoid the horror of warehouses full of unsold goods. Second off because the trade unions won higher wages. Arghiri Emmamuel's Unequal Exchange looks at how that came about over the the 1860-1920ish period, then intensified after ww2.
This is exactly Cope's point; businesses in the global north are not profitable unless kept aloft by the superprofits