In Marxist theory, those workers (
proletarians) in developed countries who benefit from the
superprofits extracted from the impoverished workers of developing countries form an "aristocracy of labor." The phrase was popularized by Karl Kautsky in 1901 and theorized by Vladimir Lenin in his treatise on Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. According to Lenin, companies in the developed world exploit workers in the developing world where wages are much lower. The increased profits enable these companies to pay higher wages to their employees "at home" (that is, in the developed world), thus creating a working class satisfied with their standard of living and not inclined to proletarian revolution. It is thus a form of exporting poverty, creating an "
exclave" of lower social class. Lenin contended that imperialism had prevented increasing class polarization in the developed world, and argued that a workers' revolution could only begin in one of the developing countries, such as Imperial Russia[citation needed].
The concept of a labor aristocracy is controversial between Marxists. While the theory is formally shared by most currents that identify positively with Lenin, including the
Communist International, few organizations place the theory at the center of their work. The term is most widely used in the United States, where it was popularized in the decade prior to the First World War by
Eugene Debs's Socialist Party of America, and the
Industrial Workers of the World (see below). In Britain those who hold to this theory include the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and the Revolutionary Communist Group. Many Trotskyists, including Leon Trotsky himself, and the early congresses of the Fourth International, have accepted the theory of the labor aristocracy; others, including Ernest Mandel and Tony Cliff, considered the theory to have mistaken arguments or "Third Worldist" implications. US revolutionary socialist Charlie Post has developed a contemporary critique of the theory.[1]
