Lenin and the "Aristocracy of Labor"

Hobsbawm, Eric

doi:10.14452/mr-021-11-1970-04_4

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…In a way, they have joined that highest stratum of workers to which V.I. Lenin and others referred as the “aristocracy of labor.” 9 From Samir Amin’s perspective of political economy, the current wave of “generalized proletarianization” has engulfed the medical profession: “A rapidly growing proportion of workers are no more than sellers of their labor power to capital … a reality that should not be obscured by the apparent autonomy conferred on them by their legal status.” 10…”

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confidence: 99%

Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health

Waitzkin

2020

Int J Health Serv

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Deepening crises now affect not only the capitalist health system in the United States, but also the national health programs of countries that have achieved universal access to services. In our recent collaborative book, Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health, we analyze these changing structural conditions and argue that the struggle toward viable national health programs now must become part of a struggle to move beyond capitalism. Privatization, cutbacks in public-sector services and institutions, and public subsidization of private profit-making through transfer of tax revenues into private insurance corporations have worsened under neoliberal policies. Financialization of capitalist economies includes the increasingly oligopolistic and financialized character of health insurance, both public and private. Those struggling for just and accessible health systems now need to confront the shifting social class position of health professionals. Due to loss of control over the work process and a reduced ability to generate high incomes compared to other professional workers, the medical profession has become proletarianized. To achieve national health programs that will remain viable over a long term, a much more fundamental transformation needs to reshape not just health care, but also the capitalist state and capitalist society.

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confidence: 99%

Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health

Waitzkin

2020

Int J Health Serv

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“…Lenin would eventually pick up on this line of thought and anchor the English proletariat’s revolutionary passivity in the conditions of colonial monopoly capitalism (cf. Hobsbawm 1973). Almost from the moment of its conception, it seemed, the English proletariat had proved itself to be the wrong sort of proletariat.…”

Section: Bourgeois Affluence and Proletarian Apathymentioning

confidence: 99%

The short happy life of the affluent working class: Consumption, debt and Embourgeoisement in the Age of Credit

Day

2019

Capital & Class

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This article reconsiders the debate over the alleged embourgeoisement of the British working classes after Second World War. ‘Bourgeois affluence and proletarian apathy’ examines why members of the New Left concluded that a ‘bourgeois’ proletariat was incapable of revolutionary activity. ‘Washing machines and proletarian persistence’ takes up the midcentury social scientific literature with an eye for the ways in which empirical research falsified key elements of that thesis. ‘Visible consumption and invisible debt’ draws attention to the ways in which both liberal advocates for and Marxist critics of embourgeoisement overemphasized spending and underemphasized debt. Finally, I close by calling attention to some of the anecdotal and empirical evidence that suggests household indebtedness perpetuates working-class dependence upon capital.

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“…Lenin observed the bribery of the upper levels of the working class with higher wages in return for their support of status quo (though the concept predates him [Hobsbawm, 2012]). The reason for increased exploitation of women (and other marginalized groups such as racial or ethnic minorities and migrants) with respect to men is that it enables male workers to be bought off by being in a "better" situation.…”

Section: Capital Gender and Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%