No.1812027
How much of it is due to imperialism and how much of it is due to obsolete labor? Manual laborers in third world country are essentially being automated into irrelevancy on the global competitive labor market the same way horses and slave labor were rendered obsolete.
No.1812050
>>1812027That’s not quite true. Workers in the third world are often using up to date technology. Think of textile machines in Dhaka, Bangladesh, or the Foxconn factories in China.
No.1812087
>>1811986Fantastic video Anon, very good
No.1812098
>>1812050and in other places that are geared towards agriculture or extractivism or shifting away from industry they are unemployed and no longer needed. Like in latin America, which has had a large unemployed population since the 80s, and these arent even the reserve army of the unemployed to drive down wages like Marx and Ricardo described, there wont ever be employment for these people because they are obsolete in the global job market.
No.1812120
>>1811982>>1811986I dont think the argument is on whether imperialism exists on the left, just who's benefitting, how it happens, and what the implications are.
No.1812122
>average
Literally doesn't matter. Median Brazilian monthly wage is less than half of the average and I suspect it's the same for, say, France.
No.1812128
The issue with certain developments of imperialist theory is concepts like "superprofits" that imagine the west can create wealth out of thin air. The leninist line of "finance capital" is overstated in regards to national wealth creation in general, where people like varoufakis thinks that buying a netflix subscription is a capital relation, when it is just the circulation of money (M-C-M) and does not produce surplus value.
A thinker like michael hudson talks about the "rentier" model DRAINING wealth of the west, which is much more correct. It is the imposition of a scarcity model based on monopoly more than it is a new political economy. Its an OLD political economy of rents as opposed to commodity-production.
>>1812027It can be both.
For example, liberalism flourished in the british empire in its inception because the british controlled the market by their expanse. Later, america came to determine global exchange rates (based on the gold standard) which forced countries to buy dollars and sustain it. Here are the immanent mechanics of mercantilist strategy, based in the national interest. Obviously since the dawn of "neoliberalism" we see american domination continue (especially through war).
So, there are no free markets basically. All markets are money markets, and gaddafi learned that the hard way. So imperialism exists, but so does the efficacy of modes of production for the circulation of commodities.
No.1812142
>average us monthly wage is 4800 bucks
>I don't know anyone who makes more than 2500 a month
What the fuck is this shit?
No.1812158
just wait until OP realizes the value of labour power isn't the same everywhere on Earth
No.1812183
>>1811982Neo-imperialism if a reality, and the bastion of it is the US. It took over even Europe after WWII.
No.1812186
So what? What political implications does this have?
No.1812189
>>1812142The number of millionaires and billionaires in the states skews the average.
A median would have more or else these numbers being in a clear linear pattern, as only the richest are benefitting.
It's another way capitalists guilt-trip the working class in their country. Specifically clueless neoliberals.
No.1812199
>>1812158Labor is uniform in nature. The apparatus of neo-imperialism to keep some lower than others is at fault here.
Think why is it in Bangladesh, for example, the labor is tailoring is considered cheaper than in the West, or how the West abused China's cheap labor and is now fighting it as it started having an emerging middle class and a growingly more competitive industry.
>>1812193Exactly, if undisturbed. However, we do not live in an undisturbed world.
No.1812308
>avarage of 5k a month+ in the netherlands.
Median income is 3.3k, not 5k+. Average numbers are useless in understanding the true conditions of most places, but especially those places where the ultra rich have their residences. Brazils median wage is 1.3k a month, according to my sources, so idk where these absurd numbers come from.
No.1812316
>>1812199>The apparatus of neo-imperialism to keep some lower than others is at fault here.This seems like idealism when its a fact that material conditions are different in global south and the west. We are comparing feudalist agricultural societies with post-industrial society. What would non-imperialist relations look like? No trade relations of manufactured high tech goods and services?
No.1812378
>>1812199>the labor is tailoring is considered cheaper than in the Westit isn't "considered" to be cheaper, it
is cheaper. it takes more value to reproduce a Western tailor than it does a Bangladeshi tailor
>the West abused China's cheap labor and is now fighting it as it started having an emerging middle class and a growingly more competitive industryyes, because the CPC has invested in the PRC's labour power, thus increasing its value. also the West didn't "abuse" squat, China plowed whatever surplus value it could into investment
No.1812451
I want median though
No.1812680
>>1812199>Labor is uniform in nature.Labor is but productivity is not. A labourer in a poorly developed country will not produce the same amount of products per hour worked as someone in Germany. While there are differences in the rate of exploitation between countries (compare more developed and more highly exploited Germany against less developed but less exploited France) due to the relative power of the working class, and while the profits extracted from the third world do trickle down to the workers of the first world slightly in the form of the personal expenditures of the rich, the vast majority of that capital is capital, it is invested again, and the vast majority of the difference is explained by the simple fact that a whole country sowing shoes by hand is not going to put out the same amount of exchange value as one filled with people working in automated factories and offices.
And the worst part is, these relative low wages reinforce themselves. Capital investment is always a labour saving move on the part of the capitalist. Machines cost the same wherever you build them, because there's only a few companies in the world making industrial machinery, and they are roughly equally priced. That means the most producent thing to do for a capitalist is invest in places with high wages for maximum savings. Why buy a million dollar machine that lasts 5 years when you pay 100 people a fraction to do the same work in Bangladesh?
Accept this truth. Because it shows you the only way to industrialise a country is by either conscious government effort to do so, or by pushing wages up. And this fact is seen in real life. High wages are both the consequence of high industrialisation and the drivers of it. Low wages are the effect of low industrialisation and the maintainers of it. The inequality in the world is self reinforcing in a market system, both on individual levels (being poor is more expensive than being rich) and on a world scale.
No.1812729
>>1812308The point is to make an international comparison not understand the actual in practice wage in dollars of every nation. There’s there’s no harmonized international dataset with median statistics anyways. Even if there were it would show a more dramatic dispariity in income as the southern countries have higher inequality and thus their income is disproportionately higher in average statistics
No.1812734
>>1812680Differences in productivity can't explain these wage differentials between countries though. If you weight wages by productivity measured in gross output, the global north still have consistently higher unit labor costs. This is the inverse of marxist definitions of exploitation, meaning the global south has straightforwardly has higher levels of exploitation in that sense.
You ask "Why buy a million dollar machine that lasts 5 years when you pay 100 people a fraction to do the same work in Bangladesh?" That answer is that capitalists prefer to do both. They buy the million dollar machine, because its productivity offsets the high cost, and then they put that machine in Bangladesh and hire from the cheapest labor pool in the world to work it, getting the best of all worlds.
No.1812742
>>1812740The proof is in the statistics I posted which account for productivity.
Or are you asking me to prove specifically that Bangladesh imports expensive textile machinery? I think you should be able to find that information yourself easily but I'll humor you. These are Bangladesh's machinery imports
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/bgd No.1812746
>>1812742this tells us nothing of the productivity of Bangladeshi tailors
Cockshott has a video that explores this notion but for the steel industry. turns out the more productive MoPs are in the US rather than India
No.1812749
>>1812734>They buy the million dollar machine, because its productivity offsets the high cost, and then they put that machine in Bangladesh and hire from the cheapest labor pool in the world to work it, getting the best of all worlds.You dont buy expensive machines to save on labour costs that are lower than the costs of said machine. Thats just throwing money away.
They aren't building high tech almost fully automated plants in bangladesh for this very reason, but they do in japan and germany.
>the global north still have consistently higher unit labor costs. This is the inverse of marxist definitions of exploitation, meaning the global south has straightforwardly has higher levels of exploitation in that sense.Yup, i already touched on that though. Also take into account transportation costs, which arent factored in to this graph you posted.
Your graph supports what I said. Indian and chinese cost per product is roughly equal, even though india is much less developed and much poorer.
I couldnt find medians, but the average chinese worker earns 16k usd a year, the average indian 4644 usd a year. The average Mexican 23k usd a year, the average indonesian 9k usd a year.
If your claim that this is no factor at all was true, then we would expect the ratio between these wages to be reflected 1:1 in your graph. Instead, we see that all remote-production-countries have roughly equal cost per unit, and all import-countries have roughly equal cost per unit. This difference being easily explained by transportation costs and a degree of tariffs.
No.1812750
>>1812742>Or are you asking me to prove specifically that Bangladesh imports expensive textile machinery?Also Bangladesh does not import >expensive< textile machinery, it imports old machinery. Have you every looked at the videos of these workshops? They run machines from 1880, they sow by hand. Compare this to the machinery in europe based weaveries, which are nearly completely automated high tech machines costing a couple million.
No.1812751
And yet first world leftists will insist that paying some trust fund kiddie 100 dollars an hour to sit at a desk and make coffee is not only an issue worth fighting for, but something that takes priority over imperialism!
No.1812752
>>1812751>paying some trust fund kiddie 100 dollars an hour to sit at a desk and make coffeeThat is basically what i have done in the last 3 years, do you have a camera on my room rn????
No.1812753
>>1812750https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13KjBRV4KDk&t=389Look at this video, it highlights modern manufacturing machinery, these are for ready made garments … meaning these need to be in abundance for a big market at high speeds in production and transportation, you cannot do this, meet the demands of the world market and be able to supply, without modern tech.
No.1812754
>>1812751Nobody said this
That isn't the proletariat
Nobody who is working class has such a job
You're fighting phantoms because you don't want real Marxists analysis to destroy your campist race war fantasy
No.1812756
>>18123081.3k BRL (260 USD), not 1.3k USD.
No.1812762
>>1812760
>Instead of fighting over how much valueless money some barista can collect in a day,
Oh.its one of you cunts.
Yeah sure Batista's make 100 bucks an hour. Kill yourself. Go play in the pool with the other nationalists.
No.1812764
>>1812142it's the same in my shithole, 1 guy earns a million and inherits a real estate worth another milion, the other earns scraps ans inherits debt on average they both do fine in practice not really it's just a stupid measurement that tells you nothing much like gdp
No.1812766
>>1812761This is still modern machinery, yes they are super exploited, and everything that OP says still applies, the point is difference in productivity cannot explain imperialist wage diffrentials, in the UK zara textile employees although get shit pay and exploited too, are paid more and this is even using similar textile tech.
No.1812767
>>1812766Wages level out across areas due to wage competition which accounts for the few tailors in the west still getting paid a lot, similarly to how teachers get paid more in the west. On average the total industrial output per person is much higher in the west. You can't honestly say you think the level of development of industry is equal between the first and third world, and that all differences in wages is just because they are arbitrarily kept lower in some countries and kept high in others for literally no economic reason. Why would the wages in the west be kept higher?
No.1812768
>>1812760
labour aristocracy are workers too just class traitors porky doesn't see them as equals and never will suggesting otherwise is beyond ridiculous
No.1812771
>>1812767The level of development of industry between the global north and global south are not equal, but how is lets say for garments, how can total industrial output be higher for garment production in Europe than in South & East asia where most garment production is, with relatively modern tech, so is it that fewer and less garment production tech but better technique or higher tech makes their industrial output higher? how does this make sense when you look at exports and trade, the volume of garments from one place to another?
No.1812774
>>1812761Although I agree most garment factories have terrible conditions, anti union, and so on, there are some more technologically advanced factories, look at this company, one of the biggest RMG exporters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB-uEKe-5to&t=58 No.1812803
>>1812749>You dont buy expensive machines to save on labour costs that are lower than the costs of said machine. Thats just throwing money away.Buying expensive machines and seeking out cheaper labor are not mutually exclusive or contradictory behaiviors. Expensive machines are bought by capitalists specifically because they make more money than working with older machines. This is because the machines allow higher productivity. This means they can produce more textiles per labor hour than is possible with less productive machinery. This holds true regardless of the wages being paid to the workers.
Of course the pressure to upgrade machinery is much higher in the Global North because the relative strength of labor in the North means wages cannot be suppressed like in the South. So then the only option for capitalists producing in the North if they want to improve their profitability is to upgrade in machinery.
Conversely capitalists operating in the South don't necessarily have to invest in heavy machinery, because the low cost of labor means they can earn similar rates of profit with relatively less productive machinery. But there is still an incentive to adopt productive technologies nonetheless because more productive processes mean higher rates of exploitation and thus profit.
This is why the big multinational corporations that dominate the world economy make a point of exporting modern machinery to the places where they're outsourcing production. It's simply more profitable to do so.
No.1812808
>>1812771> how can total industrial output be higher for garment production in Europe than in South & East asia where most garment production isIts not, and thats not whats claimed.
Industrial sectors are not equally distributed. The industrialisation as a whole of the first world is higher, more high tech, more automated, which makes labour in the first world on the average more productive. Wages within a city, and to an extend smaller countries like european ones, level out because people will go work in higher paying jobs if the exist. This causes even equally productive work, whether it is servers or sewstresses, more highly paid in the first world due to labour competition.
This then also has the logical consequence that any job that can be outsourced abroad easily, such as simple manufacturing, is, due to the lower average productivity of the developing world causing lower wages. This is what we see.
So, it is not a contradiction that there is very little textile industry in the west, because of high development. You ought to look at the local labour market, in which wages are capped by the productivity of workers.
>>1812803>Conversely capitalists operating in the South don't necessarily have to invest in heavy machinery, because the low cost of labor means they can earn similar rates of profit with relatively less productive machinery. But there is still an incentive to adopt productive technologies nonetheless because more productive processes mean higher rates of exploitation and thus profit.What you miss is that capitalism is global. There are no "capitalist operating in the global south". There are just capitalists. With the exception of China, whose government consciously creates a capitalist class and owns all its own industry, the "capitalists in the global south" are the very same multinational conglomorates as in the north.
Small local capitalists still have incentive to innovate, true, but they are increasingly small fry in a world of imperialist capitalism. The vast majority of the worlds capital is in the hands of multinationals.
No.1812810
>>1812803Also the higher the rate of exploitation the lower the incentive to automate. Cockshot has a video where he shows how this works. The lower the wage the more relatively expensive the replacing machines become even if it saves labour overall.
No.1812816
Whole lot of labor aristocrats ITT really desperate not to admit their relatively low rate of exploitation is at the expense of the Global South
No.1812818
>>1812816How is foreign policy and a stage of development under capitalist empire the fault of the labor movement
No.1812819
>>1812818There’s nothing noble about a labor movement which exists to enrich finance capitalism and its lackies
No.1812822
>>1812819Wage increases reduce surplus extraction?
No.1812824
>>1812818Well if you benefit from imperialism, and you spend your time and energy arguing that the privilege you enjoy isn't connected to the exploitation of the imperial periphery, instead arguing it's simply because we're better or more productive workers despite the evidence, then I think its safe to say you're basically a supporter of that imperialism
No.1812840
>>1812816>the most productive workers are the least exploited>this totally makes sense trust meleast retarded unequal exchange believer
No.1812844
>>1812843
>Service workers by definition aren’t “productive”
wth do service workers have to do with anything? also Marx disagrees with you. if a worker produces surplus value for a capitalist then they are by definition productive
No.1812848
>>1812843
>Service workers by definition aren’t “productive”
It takes a mega brain genius to think service workers, a category including doctors, teachers, statisticians, architects, and engineers "aren't productive"
>least retarded unequal exchange believer
I would be offended by your use of a slur, but in your case it seems to be reappropriation by a member of the disenfranchised group in question, so we'll let it slide
No.1812849
>>1812752Double espresso, no sugar plz
No.1812876
>>1812847
have you even read Capital?
No.1812888
>>1812824>Well if you benefit from imperialismIn what way? Has class warfare completely been abolished in the core?
No.1812891
>>1812888“Class war” hasn’t existed as a meaningful thing since the founding of the PRC showed that class boundaries can be crossed for the purpose of building communism. As it stands the dialectic is a struggle between imperialism of the core and self determination of civilization states
No.1812904
>>1811986>Adjusted for cost of living>US drops from 4845 to 3114What the fuck is this bullshit? Rent is 1k/month ALONE and that's even before factoring in food, transportation, gas, insurance, etc.
This is completely misleading bullshit.
No.1812907
>>1812904Damn, my current rent translates to ~300USD.
feels good burgertowners, I don't even have to work 5 days a week.
No.1812908
>>1812904(Cont. because it got cut off for some reason)
it is fucking impossible for the average worker to be able to purchase "3114" dollars worth of commodities every month after cost of living purchases have been factored in. This analysis is completely erroneous. Who the fuck is being interviewed in these charts? Employees of Google? Most Americans don't even have $400 worth of SAVINGS that they can draw on and yet retarded ultras want to pretend like we're all living like kings in the West.
Where the fuck do you think the constantly growing ranks of the homeless are coming from if life is so good over here you dipshits?
No.1812911
>>1812908It's silly and would have still been silly then but they're basically operating off of the imagined view, the self perception, of the west in the 90s. Unwilling to see how far the Western worker has fallen, on what their 'social contract' is currently being used for.
No.1812917
>>1812912
>And much like a heroin addict about to overdose, the kindest thing to do is to put them out of their misery entirely
We don't live in the 30s you fucking retard, you can just treat their mental health and get them scripted….
Not sending their best as usual.
No.1813370
>>1812926
junkies are the bane of lumpens
No.1813376
>>1813370>>1812926>productive membersghey
No.1813407
>>1813367Filial responsibility laws allow debt collectors to go after your kids for your debts in some cases.
No.1813565
>>1812904You are an actual knuckle dragging troglodyte anon. Reread the charts. There are 4 of them. Read their titles and legends and dont just glaze over them like an idiot. When US dollars are transformed into PPP adjusted dollars they dont change at all, why would they? Moron
No.1813694
>>1813407That is still just putting debts off onto the rest of society and obscuring that fact behind bloodline magic mumbo jumbo
No.1814009
communism is when whining about 'wage disparity' and 'imperialism'
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