Labor aristocracy

Under labor aristocracy, the elite is understood within the working class ( working class ) in the industrialized countries of Western Europe and North America that formed from the mid-19th century.

The term was already used Capital by Karl Marx ( 1818-83 ) in his work, he meant the " highest paid part of the working class, (...) their aristocracy ." Friedrich Engels also speaks of a " aristocracy among the working class," which had been found in the "big trades unions " their organizations. " [ Y] ou have managed it, to force a relatively comfortable position, and they accept it as final. " Already in 1858 led Engels in a letter to Marx, that " the English proletariat in fact more and more verbürgert so that seems to finally bring this most bourgeois of all nations is there to have a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. "

In Lenin (1870-1924) the labor aristocracy to a battle cry in its theory of imperialism was and was directed primarily against Western European and North American trade union and party leaders (see also trade unionism ). Lenin defined the causes and effects of the development of a labor aristocracy in the following way: " Causes: 1 exploitation of the world by the country concerned; 2 its monopoly on the world market; 3 its colonial monopoly. Effects: 1 Verbürgerung a part of the English proletariat; Second part can be run by people who are bought by the bourgeoisie or at least paid by it. "

Analytically, the term is sometimes understood as an internal differentiation of the working class. Especially in the English social history of the ajar to the Marxist concept of tradition plays an important role. There it is applied to the striving for ( small ) bourgeois respectability particularly well qualified layer of the workers. This discussion was also performed for the German case. The result was that it would indeed have also taken place in Germany something of a labor aristocracy in the 19th and early 20th century, but this phenomenon was less pronounced than in the UK. Well also to avoid ideological references, the concept of the labor aristocracy plays in the German speaking today only a subordinate role. Important, terms such as power, performance and value elites.

In a global scale considered, could also be argued that the Western working classes take in contrast to the rest of the working classes in the world, the position of the aristocracy one today.