Your gut is correct. The international left needs something to offer all workers, it’s idealist nonsense to expect that a Western left would ever be able to attract enough people to have leverage and use it to advance the position of the international working class without improving the situation for Western workers. That comment is grossly overgeneralizing the notion that imperialism incentivizes class collaborationism and false consciousness, which is true, but does not imply that anyone is better off by having a leftist movement that has nothing to offer to the people it’s trying to attract.

I doubt if Medicare-For-All got passed the American Bourgeois would be like “well we were holding back on the imperialism up till now, but since I gotta treat the core plebs a bit better I’m gonna ramp this shit up!”

They’re already not holding back.

Yeah it’s not like the failure of the working class in the West to organize somehow means the exploited third world gets to keep more of its wealth. There are problems with labor aristocracy in the West, but the solution to educate around global working class interests the way the capitalist class does.

I feel like this is less ultra left bs, although there’s some of that, but more creating a rationale for not being active in labor organizing. The West can’t do shit, the noble savages of the hinterlands will save us, so we can sit back and be snarky on the internet.

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where’s (the source for) that map saying a globally equal distribution of wealth would slightly raise the average in because it’s so unequal?

any fast food worker passes way more value of product through their hands than they’re paid.

This is just an argument against organizing, which is wrong inherently.

Edit to add: This isn’t to say that class colaboration should be supported, but that as always the struggle for better must be taken with an international, anti-imperialist stance. A pro-imperialism advocacy group should be opposed, sure, but proletarians in the global north are largely debtors and kept paralyzed, not quite revolutionary.

International opposition to Imperialism serves as the primary lever to push the American proletariat into revolutionary potential.

This is the kind of sentiment that should be nested inside nuanced arguments that explain exactly how and why this conclusion was made and shared.

“Part of the problem” is some scold ass language. Asking people to just accept diminished quality of life and labor standards isn’t exactly going to win people to the cause. Depending on the person or circumstance or audience I’d engage with this person but the delivery, format, etc tells me this is much more “being right on the internet” than trying to be constructive and start dialog. Self-flagellating labor aristocrats aren’t going to topple capitalism no matter how hard they do it. If I was feeling especially petty I’d reply that the shame vector is a byproduct of western colonial christian moralism.

If the end goal of labor activism is just in your country? You aren’t helping workers elsewhere. This isn’t exactly hard to understand. But it doesn’t mean all efforts are inherently counterproductive because of who does it and where.

Again, I’d be willing to discuss this seriously with a person who wants a serious discussion. Not a person with an axe to grind on the internet who wraps inflammatory rhetoric around a nugget of truth. It’s lazy and I’m lazy so I’d probably just tune this person out. Better arguments about this exact concept can be read. Better faith actors can be engaged with.

what reading no theory does to a mfer

Truly the best option is to do absolutely nothing

Sometimes. It’s essentially the same way why trade unions can sometimes be reactionary

E.g. I think UAW supports the tariffs against Chinese EVs. This improves the job security of American car workers but hurts Chinese car workers and companies which in turns reduces the ability of international working class to buy (cheap high quality) Chinese cars

I know a lot of unions nowadays with Boeing, Northrup Gromman, etc refuse to take any anti-war stances/actions because their priority is taking care of their missile builders, not the lives of non-Americans

My shoes got holes in them, I eat SPAM and ramen regularly as a meal, socks and underwear are worn until they physically cannot be categorized as clothing but I’ve got a monocle so I’m just the same Jeff Bezos.

While people in the Imperial core do benefit from imperialism to the extent that it makes them unrevolutionary, it doesn’t mean that making them worse off will make it any better outside the core.

Increasing income inequality in America doesn’t make third-world countries any less exploited. It just means more of their labour is going to the American bourgeoisie rather than the American worker. The only argument you can really make is American workers should be worse off because they benefit from exploitation. But that’s not a Marxist position, that’s a moral position. It’s a position that only seeks to punish people.

Regardless of whether American workers unfairly benefit from imperialism, I don’t like when children go hungry, I don’t like when LGBTQ+ folks are attacked, and I don’t like when people die because they can’t afford medication. Fighting for these things in America will not stop nor make worse the exploitation of the third-world.

I was going to type up a whole bunch of shit, but honestly I’d rather hear from other Hexbears as an ultrabroke burgerlander.

Yeah, the person commenting needs to either touch grass (if American) or get an “ehhh, kinda sorta” if outside the imperial core. When you help in forming job unions or tenants unions and you got some reputation as a commie, you ultimately help the cause down the line. I’m out there trying to improve the conditions of people in even shittier spots than mine, whether that’s someone in a poorer, largely minority ghetto, or someone getting fucking genocided across the pond. You don’t win people over being a caricature of what some boomer makes of college students.

There are some good critiques of thirdworldism in this thread already, so I won’t add to them. But it really bothers me, how few people preface their comments with:“Yes, unequal exchange and superexploitation are real. Yes sometimes the working class in the imperial core benefits from them.”

Acknowledge the material reality first, then make your argument. Also using “we” and “here” as a synonym for westerners or US citizens, as if no one else was using this platform is problematic.

I’m not thirdworldist and do think the international working class does have common interests and should stand united, but it is important to realize that sometimes western workers behave like a worker aristocracy.

Don’t be like them avoid these errors. For example:

• When trade unions in the US support strict tariffs on China, because the bosses promise real hard, that then they’ll refrain from moving production offshore. Then those unions enter into an alliance with western capital and become complicit in exploitation.

• When German leftist organizations want to be seen as reasonable, and acceptable by the state to avoid persecution and keep the little institutional support they get, there is one single thing they know they need to do(and most do it): fail to be anti imperialist and instead support NATO and Israel unconditionally or at least conveniently remain “neutral” to put the interests of the workers “at home” first. In doing so they betray the international working class and become complicit in genocide.

• Wherever people say "Yes, we support [struggle abroad / struggle of racialized minorities], but people wouldn’t understand yet if we did something about it. So instead, let’s focuse on [struggle of privileged parts of western working class] first.