Labor aristocracy

The labor aristocracy is the best-salaried and most privileged grouping of the proletariat which largely emerges in capitalist-imperialist societies. Labor aristocrats often belong to highly skilled professions and are able to exert far greater power in collective bargaining, particularly when organized in trade unions, as a result of their relative irreplaceability to the bourgeoisie compared to less privileged workers. The labor aristocracy is able to expand from wealth extracted from imperialist exploitation, and for the bourgeoisie serves to pacify and weaken a section of the working class movement, with many labor aristocrats consequentially being supportive of the capitalist system.

Formulation as a concept

Vladimir Lenin, in his 1916 work, "Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism" defined the Labor Aristocracy as a Strata of workers who were bribed from super profits in various ways, such as higher wages, better standards of living, and generally get more privileges by the Capitalists. Lenin later expanded on the concept of the Labor Aristocracy in various works such as, "Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder".

Lenin also said that the size of the Labor Aristocracy is dependent on the amount of super profits which can be set aside to bribe this section of the working class. (Vladimir Lenin, The Second Congress Of The Communist International)

It goes without saying that, out of this tidy sum, at least five hundred millions can be spent as a sop to the labour leaders and the labour aristocracy, i.e., on all sorts of bribes. The whole thing boils down to nothing but bribery. It is done in a thousand different ways: by increasing cultural facilities in the largest centres, by creating educational institutions, and by providing co-operative, trade union and parliamentary leaders with thousands of cushy jobs. This is done wherever present-day civilised capitalist relations exist. It is these thousands of millions in super-profits that form the economic basis of opportunism in the working-class movement. In America, Britain and France we see a far greater persistence of the opportunist leaders, of the upper crust of the working class, the labour aristocracy; they offer stronger resistance to the Communist movement. That is why we must be prepared to find it harder for the European and American workers’ parties to get rid of this disease than was the case in our country. We know that enormous successes have been achieved in the treatment of this disease since the Third International was formed, but we have not yet finished the job; the purg- ing of the workers’ parties, the revolutionary parties of the proletariat all over the world, of bourgeois influences, of the opportunists in their ranks, is very far from complete.

Debate on the labor aristocracy in the First World

There is an ongoing debate among Marxists on whether the Labor Aristocracy makes up the majority of the working class in the Imperial Core. Although this idea has been supported by many Third Worldists, this formulation has been contested by many Marxists.

See also

• Petite bourgeoisie
• Imperialism