Global Wage Scaling and Left Ideology: A Critique of Charles Post on the ‘Labour Aristocracy’

Zak Cope

A chapter in Contradictions: Finance, Greed, and Labor Unequally Paid, 2013, pp 89-129 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This essay demonstrates that US economist Charles Post’s attempted rebuttal of the ‘labour aristocracy’ thesis is both theoretically and empirically flawed. Defending the proposition that colonialism, capital export imperialism and the formation of oligopolies with global reach have, over the past century and more, worked to sustain the living standards of a privileged upper stratum of the international working class, it rejects Post’s assertion that the existence of such cannot be proven. The essay concludes with a working definition of this ‘labour aristocracy’, setting the concept within the field of global political economy and reclaiming its relevance to the Marxist tradition.

Keywords: Labour aristocracy; imperialism; class consciousness; monopoly; competition; wage differentials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rpeczz:s0161-7230(2013)0000028005

DOI: 10.1108/S0161-7230(2013)0000028005

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