The Roots of Working Class Reformism and Conservatism: A Response to Zak Cope’s Defense of the “Labor Aristocracy” Thesis

Charles Post

A chapter in Research in Political Economy, 2014, vol. 29, pp 241-260 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This essay is a response to Zak Cope’s defense of the “labor aristocracy” theory of working class reformism and conservatism. Specifically, the essay engages Cope’s claims that British colonialism, imperialist investment, and transnational “monopoly” corporations have accrued “surplus-profits” that have underwritten the existence of a “labor aristocracy” historically, and that “unequal exchange” today has transformed almost the entirety of the working classes of the global North into a labor aristocracy. We conclude with a presentation of an alternative explanation of working class reformism and conservatism.

Keywords: Labor aristocracy; reformism; conservatism; monopoly; capitalist competition; wage differentials and class consciousness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rpeczz:s0161-723020140000029008

DOI: 10.1108/S0161-723020140000029008

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