Surplus capital is not a “libertarian thing”, it’s a Lenin thing, it’s the reason why capital is exported.
Sorry, we’re miscommunicating I think. Are you conflating “dollars” with “capital” here?
My reading tells me the export of surplus capital refers to the export of productive machines, not the literal national currency. But I am, in fact, talking about the demand for the literal national currency i.e. not surplus capital specifically. Yes, US productive capacity is still high and there’s still a lot of unequal exchange happening between the US and its imperialized holdings as it forces them to use its machines and proprietary software etc etc, but notably interest rates have needed to remain high (so no more historically low interest rates) and this has put incredible downward pressure on the value of loans in USD.
At the same time, the sanctions regime has bifurcated the global economy. There’s now a parallel economy that exists outside of USD and this is adding additional downward pressure. Nations can now get loans from elsewhere (notably China), trade with national currencies for commodities and even resources like oil, and avoid unequal exchange with the declining hegemon because of the large and growing non-USD economy. The value of US dollar and demand for dollars can still decline despite US exports.
So, between nations not wanting loans from the US and being able to trade without USD, literal demand for dollars has fallen. This is, in part, where the inflation is coming from.
Where is the money going? Police, judicial, and carceral costs are increasing year over year.
[…]
Did I mention that over half of the money spent on incarceration and policing (reaching a quarter trillion dollars every year, chart ends in 04, $261B spent in 2018) is wages for cops, guards, and judicial staff?
Is this not a sign of the debourgeoisification of the rest of the working class? The empire needs to spend more and more on policing and incarceration of exploited and superexploited workers at home, to the point that those high costs of control are now eating into quality of life of the rest of the working class due to inflation. At the same time it needs to keep elevating the lifestyles of pigs higher and higher to keep them showing up to work, as the act of policing itself becomes more reviled and more mentally taxing (I’m reminded of Fanon talking about how colonialism dehumanizes the colonizer). This is the other side of where the inflation is coming from.
As the cops, guards, judicial staff, and all the other carceral employees demand more wages they’re acquiring investments and housing and special legally protected status. They’re being further bourgeoisified, developing into their own special class and totally separate from the rest of workers who are beginning to be debourgeoisified (they can’t acquire housing, they can’t build savings, they don’t have investments, they certainly can’t seclude and segregate themselves away from the rest of the working class into white enclaves).
This special class of carceral workers is being elevated at their expense. They’re being turned from national police to colonial police, many white workers are being turned from settlers into… not natives, but something adjacent?
These aren’t conditions to wait around for! Don’t wait for shit to get worse! There is revolutionary potential now! You have hundreds of national liberation struggles and 100 million oppressed nationals across Black/Indigenous people and Chicanos/Latinos. These struggles could have been turned into revolution in the 60s but revisionist Communists at that time said “wait we need white workers!”.
When did I give this impression? I merely contend that shit is getting worse, not that we need to wait for anything!
Yes, the internally colonized people of the US are the most revolutionary force within it. I work in a factory and I can see how all the positions of management are only given to white English speakers, while the production floor is dominated by nonwhite people whose first languages are French, Arabic, or Spanish. I can see what you’re talking about every day.
I guess I’m just optimistic that the white working class has finally entered its own decline, but as you say, the embodied and generational wealth that they’ve accumulated will take quite some time to disappear. This is not a call to wait around, merely an observation that the time those misguided white communists were waiting for might be happening.
All of this is to say that the recent labor upsurge and rise in class consciousness has a material basis and isn’t just a fad.
Am I to understand that your point is nothing has fundamentally changed?
Nothing has fundamentally changed from the 60s, assimilation (which is paid for by Imperial value transfers) of oppressed nations is dual education and incarceration, both have increased over time, in dialectic. Women have been participating in wage labor more and more but that looks to have reached a relative peak.
You seem to think inflation is anything other than more wages than can be spent or reinvested (if in savings banks and credit unions). Inflation in the US is due to super-profits added to wages. An exploited Proletariat literally cannot save money, and globally luxury spending does not mean they are exploited!
My reading tells me the export of surplus capital refers to the export of productive machines, not the literal national currency.
Example: Sterling system. Britain exported capital to its own settlements in Canada and Australia. Britain was practicing “unequal exchange” (violent trade monopoly) with India, paying off their domestic workers with it, and then sending settlers to collect more resources in the colonies. Also, Lenin called French Imperialism “usury Imperialism” because France was exporting literal currency in loans to Russia and other European states. Capital exports of “real machines” are mostly to other Imperialist states or military allies, or Socialist states brought into circumstantial trade deals (same as Lenin’s time with NEP), and not “backward” economic systems of semi-colonial, semi-feudal character as seen in former Spanish colonies, India, and Africa. France still performs “usury Imperialism” (coupon clipping) with French and Euro currencies.
Cops are petty booj, more cops means more petty booj.
The US is a more advanced British Empire + French Empire in one. It’s not a surprise since the US inherited every Imperial relationship the former great powers had!
I guess I’m just optimistic that the white working class has finally entered its own decling.
This is copium and you’re universalizing your position within the Settler economy. In my other post there’s a Polemic Against Settler “Maoism” that criticizes your line (this does not mean you are 100% wrong! It means you have some fundamental misunderstandings but you are in the right direction!). New class consciousness is due to the eugenic nature of settler society where productive, but unexploited economically due to Imperialism, workers were put into the disease gauntlet serving fascistic semi-proles and petty boojies who did not care for their well being.
Outside of Economistic practices focusing on wages and prices, the great thing this new wave has brought through the pandemic is organizing around workers’ health and wellness, as well as property abuses such as AI likenesses for performers. These are still material problems and the pandemic exposed them, but still this unions are hitting Economistic dead ends in organizing energy, still many workers are were permanently injured by the pandemic conditions and many are still getting sick with no protections. Union activity isn’t the end all be all of class consciousness, as seen in AFL’s history of making the bombs that kill people so they can have houses and cushy retirements.
And don’t pray for white conditions to worsen. Lenin railed against German comrades who were preoccupied with wages in Imperialist states. No strong party was developed during and after WW1 and when the “crunch” actually happened to workers obsessed with wages and inflation, they suited up to herd the “undesirables” into camps. My worry is that when whites start feeling real class struggle they’ll turn my people in prison into actual slaves if we don’t have the readiness for a violent opposition ala AIM and the BPP.
You seem to think inflation is anything other than more wages than can be spent or reinvested (if in savings banks and credit unions).
Yes? Inflation, as experienced by the worker, is the cost of goods and services and housing rising faster than wages. Which is happening. Inflation does not automatically equal higher wages. Inflation, again as experienced by the worker, means higher prices. If that comes with higher wages then the worker can keep up with inflation and no one notices much other than the fact that their savings literally lose value over time, but debourgeoisification has disrupted this process. We are now seeing inflation actually outpace workers, they are not just making more to pay their higher bills and it’s lead to the recent labor upsurge.
This is not universal, obviously. The wages of managers, cops, so-called skilled laborers, bureaucrats, etc have risen in pace with inflation. We have seen some workers keep up and other workers fall behind, splitting off those workers and debourgeoisifying them as they fail to save and fail to attain property and fail to get “ahead.” I’m not sure why you’re insisting this isn’t happening.
Do you think there isn’t a labor upsurge and that class consciousness isn’t rising?
An exploited Proletariat literally cannot save money, and globally luxury spending does not mean they are exploited!
You’re right! And would you look at that, the savings rate in the US has been declining since the 60s, supposedly the period when things stopped changing. The savings rate briefly went up after the financial crash and bucked the trend of decline (i.e. when capital destruction created new avenues for investment) and obviously spiked during the period when people cared about COVID, but on the whole there has been a steady decline that coincides with the way real wages have stagnated.
Inflation is not in “luxury spending” it’s in fucking groceries and rent and housing.
The US is a more advanced British Empire + French Empire in one. It’s not a surprise since the US inherited every Imperial relationship the former great powers had!
Okay, so you are speaking literally of currency being exported. But you’re contradicting yourself and I’m confused.
You say “capital exports bring down the prices of goods” yet we are also talking about conditions of strong inflation. Is this not a contradiction? Does this not indicate that capital exports are falling, and that demand for USD is falling? You say nothing has changed, but despite the harshest sanctions regime in history we have seen Russia’s economy continue to grow! We are seeing nations make deals with each other in national currencies, totally bypassing USD. We are seeing alternatives to the World Bank and IMF, which offer loans in currencies other than USD.
The world is changing, and the conditions for white workers will change with it. Maybe it’s too early to say
Cops are petty booj, more cops means more petty booj.
What productive assets do they own? I think they’re a special protected class created by the State, and while their class interests align with business owners and independent farmers they are still distinct and it’s worth recognizing it.
This is copium and you’re universalizing your position within the Settler economy.
Maybe. Some of the trends I’m noticing have only been around for a few years, it could just be a blip and the white working class will go back to feasting on the superprofits of the global South soon enough. But-
Outside of Economistic practices focusing on wages and prices, the great thing this new wave has brought through the pandemic is organizing around workers’ health and wellness, as well as property abuses such as AI likenesses for performers. These are still material problems and the pandemic exposed them, but still this unions are hitting Economistic dead ends in organizing energy.
We’ve also seen the contract fights have not focused on wages. While the companies have been throwing record wages at workers the contracts still get rejected because what they actually want is time away from work and time where they can’t be scheduled and an end to understaffing, or like you say, workers’ health and wellness.
But we are also seeing union locals organizing against the Zionist genocide. That’s huge! The labor upsurge might be gaining a political character and you seem to be ignoring it in favor of pessimism. The union leadership is still in lockstep with the Democrats, and as long as that is the case they will hit those dead ends, but if I’m right and the rank-and-file are being debourgeoisified then we are going to either see the leadership change or we’ll see the NLRB declared unconstitutional and unions will have to go back to illegal strikes.
Sorry, we’re miscommunicating I think. Are you conflating “dollars” with “capital” here?
My reading tells me the export of surplus capital refers to the export of productive machines, not the literal national currency. But I am, in fact, talking about the demand for the literal national currency i.e. not surplus capital specifically. Yes, US productive capacity is still high and there’s still a lot of unequal exchange happening between the US and its imperialized holdings as it forces them to use its machines and proprietary software etc etc, but notably interest rates have needed to remain high (so no more historically low interest rates) and this has put incredible downward pressure on the value of loans in USD.
At the same time, the sanctions regime has bifurcated the global economy. There’s now a parallel economy that exists outside of USD and this is adding additional downward pressure. Nations can now get loans from elsewhere (notably China), trade with national currencies for commodities and even resources like oil, and avoid unequal exchange with the declining hegemon because of the large and growing non-USD economy. The value of US dollar and demand for dollars can still decline despite US exports.
So, between nations not wanting loans from the US and being able to trade without USD, literal demand for dollars has fallen. This is, in part, where the inflation is coming from.
Is this not a sign of the debourgeoisification of the rest of the working class? The empire needs to spend more and more on policing and incarceration of exploited and superexploited workers at home, to the point that those high costs of control are now eating into quality of life of the rest of the working class due to inflation. At the same time it needs to keep elevating the lifestyles of pigs higher and higher to keep them showing up to work, as the act of policing itself becomes more reviled and more mentally taxing (I’m reminded of Fanon talking about how colonialism dehumanizes the colonizer). This is the other side of where the inflation is coming from.
As the cops, guards, judicial staff, and all the other carceral employees demand more wages they’re acquiring investments and housing and special legally protected status. They’re being further bourgeoisified, developing into their own special class and totally separate from the rest of workers who are beginning to be debourgeoisified (they can’t acquire housing, they can’t build savings, they don’t have investments, they certainly can’t seclude and segregate themselves away from the rest of the working class into white enclaves).
This special class of carceral workers is being elevated at their expense. They’re being turned from national police to colonial police, many white workers are being turned from settlers into… not natives, but something adjacent?
When did I give this impression? I merely contend that shit is getting worse, not that we need to wait for anything!
Yes, the internally colonized people of the US are the most revolutionary force within it. I work in a factory and I can see how all the positions of management are only given to white English speakers, while the production floor is dominated by nonwhite people whose first languages are French, Arabic, or Spanish. I can see what you’re talking about every day.
I guess I’m just optimistic that the white working class has finally entered its own decline, but as you say, the embodied and generational wealth that they’ve accumulated will take quite some time to disappear. This is not a call to wait around, merely an observation that the time those misguided white communists were waiting for might be happening.
All of this is to say that the recent labor upsurge and rise in class consciousness has a material basis and isn’t just a fad.
Am I to understand that your point is nothing has fundamentally changed?
Nothing has fundamentally changed from the 60s, assimilation (which is paid for by Imperial value transfers) of oppressed nations is dual education and incarceration, both have increased over time, in dialectic. Women have been participating in wage labor more and more but that looks to have reached a relative peak.
You seem to think inflation is anything other than more wages than can be spent or reinvested (if in savings banks and credit unions). Inflation in the US is due to super-profits added to wages. An exploited Proletariat literally cannot save money, and globally luxury spending does not mean they are exploited!
Example: Sterling system. Britain exported capital to its own settlements in Canada and Australia. Britain was practicing “unequal exchange” (violent trade monopoly) with India, paying off their domestic workers with it, and then sending settlers to collect more resources in the colonies. Also, Lenin called French Imperialism “usury Imperialism” because France was exporting literal currency in loans to Russia and other European states. Capital exports of “real machines” are mostly to other Imperialist states or military allies, or Socialist states brought into circumstantial trade deals (same as Lenin’s time with NEP), and not “backward” economic systems of semi-colonial, semi-feudal character as seen in former Spanish colonies, India, and Africa. France still performs “usury Imperialism” (coupon clipping) with French and Euro currencies.
Cops are petty booj, more cops means more petty booj.
The US is a more advanced British Empire + French Empire in one. It’s not a surprise since the US inherited every Imperial relationship the former great powers had!
This is copium and you’re universalizing your position within the Settler economy. In my other post there’s a Polemic Against Settler “Maoism” that criticizes your line (this does not mean you are 100% wrong! It means you have some fundamental misunderstandings but you are in the right direction!). New class consciousness is due to the eugenic nature of settler society where productive, but unexploited economically due to Imperialism, workers were put into the disease gauntlet serving fascistic semi-proles and petty boojies who did not care for their well being.
Outside of Economistic practices focusing on wages and prices, the great thing this new wave has brought through the pandemic is organizing around workers’ health and wellness, as well as property abuses such as AI likenesses for performers. These are still material problems and the pandemic exposed them, but still this unions are hitting Economistic dead ends in organizing energy, still many workers are were permanently injured by the pandemic conditions and many are still getting sick with no protections. Union activity isn’t the end all be all of class consciousness, as seen in AFL’s history of making the bombs that kill people so they can have houses and cushy retirements.
And don’t pray for white conditions to worsen. Lenin railed against German comrades who were preoccupied with wages in Imperialist states. No strong party was developed during and after WW1 and when the “crunch” actually happened to workers obsessed with wages and inflation, they suited up to herd the “undesirables” into camps. My worry is that when whites start feeling real class struggle they’ll turn my people in prison into actual slaves if we don’t have the readiness for a violent opposition ala AIM and the BPP.
Bold statement!
Yes? Inflation, as experienced by the worker, is the cost of goods and services and housing rising faster than wages. Which is happening. Inflation does not automatically equal higher wages. Inflation, again as experienced by the worker, means higher prices. If that comes with higher wages then the worker can keep up with inflation and no one notices much other than the fact that their savings literally lose value over time, but debourgeoisification has disrupted this process. We are now seeing inflation actually outpace workers, they are not just making more to pay their higher bills and it’s lead to the recent labor upsurge.
This is not universal, obviously. The wages of managers, cops, so-called skilled laborers, bureaucrats, etc have risen in pace with inflation. We have seen some workers keep up and other workers fall behind, splitting off those workers and debourgeoisifying them as they fail to save and fail to attain property and fail to get “ahead.” I’m not sure why you’re insisting this isn’t happening.
Do you think there isn’t a labor upsurge and that class consciousness isn’t rising?
You’re right! And would you look at that, the savings rate in the US has been declining since the 60s, supposedly the period when things stopped changing. The savings rate briefly went up after the financial crash and bucked the trend of decline (i.e. when capital destruction created new avenues for investment) and obviously spiked during the period when people cared about COVID, but on the whole there has been a steady decline that coincides with the way real wages have stagnated.
Inflation is not in “luxury spending” it’s in fucking groceries and rent and housing.
Okay, so you are speaking literally of currency being exported. But you’re contradicting yourself and I’m confused.
You say “capital exports bring down the prices of goods” yet we are also talking about conditions of strong inflation. Is this not a contradiction? Does this not indicate that capital exports are falling, and that demand for USD is falling? You say nothing has changed, but despite the harshest sanctions regime in history we have seen Russia’s economy continue to grow! We are seeing nations make deals with each other in national currencies, totally bypassing USD. We are seeing alternatives to the World Bank and IMF, which offer loans in currencies other than USD.
The world is changing, and the conditions for white workers will change with it. Maybe it’s too early to say
What productive assets do they own? I think they’re a special protected class created by the State, and while their class interests align with business owners and independent farmers they are still distinct and it’s worth recognizing it.
Maybe. Some of the trends I’m noticing have only been around for a few years, it could just be a blip and the white working class will go back to feasting on the superprofits of the global South soon enough. But-
We’ve also seen the contract fights have not focused on wages. While the companies have been throwing record wages at workers the contracts still get rejected because what they actually want is time away from work and time where they can’t be scheduled and an end to understaffing, or like you say, workers’ health and wellness.
But we are also seeing union locals organizing against the Zionist genocide. That’s huge! The labor upsurge might be gaining a political character and you seem to be ignoring it in favor of pessimism. The union leadership is still in lockstep with the Democrats, and as long as that is the case they will hit those dead ends, but if I’m right and the rank-and-file are being debourgeoisified then we are going to either see the leadership change or we’ll see the NLRB declared unconstitutional and unions will have to go back to illegal strikes.