mim on appropriation of labor

[maoista]

c. Appropriation of labor

Ultimately the class structure is about the appropriation of labor. In
"Imperialism and Its Class Structure in 1997," I go at length into the
calculations for who is appropriating labor. Blacks, First Nations, Aztlan
people, Puerto Ricans and Asian-descended people within imperialist
country borders have histories of exploitation and oppression, but today,
with the exceptions of the undocumented and lumpen-proletariat, they
differ from Euro-Amerikan workers only in degree, not in quality when it
comes to their relationship to the Third World proletariat. As we have
already shown in ITAL MIM Theory 1 END, for this reason, Blacks taken as a
nation are ahead of some advanced European capitalist countries in terms
of income. This shows us that there is variation within capitalism and the
buying off of workers. A similar thing is seen in Ireland and the Six
Counties of "Northern Ireland," where although Ireland faces national
oppression, its workers are integrated economically into imperialism to
such an extent that they compare favorably with the conditions of workers
in some imperialist countries. Thus there is only a proletariat in the
war-torn Six Counties of Ireland . The proletariat there suffers
discrimination relative to Protestant workers on a national basis with
religion as the cover.

We must recall that "having nothing to lose but chains" is the definition
of proletariat. Genocide and historical exploitation determine whether one
is born into the proletariat, but they do not prevent the imperialists
from lifting today's oppressed nationalities out of their propertyless
condition into the labor aristocracy. A persyn born with no property may
nonetheless start to absorb more labor in consumption than the persyn
gives back to class society in production. True, such a labor-aristocracy
will be newer and less stable than the labor aristocracy of the oppressor
nations, but it is labor aristocracy nonetheless. In fact, those with a
sense of scrambling for crumbs off the plate are often the most
reactionary of all towards the proletariat they just left and seek to stay
above.

In this regard, as we have seen already, Latino workers continue to have a
high proportion in the productive sector. We can still speak of an Aztlan
proletariat. We see a genuine "split in the working-class" as Lenin said
within that oppressed internal semi-colony. As we will detail elsewhere
though, even in the case of Puerto Rico, the economic integration with
imperialism has already occurred to such an extent that the economic tide
is on the Puerto Rican labor aristocracy's side.

The "Brown" peoples are the most proletarian within the internal
semi-colonies. There are also immigrant Haitians and African nationalities
and "boat people" from Asia--all terribly exploited or super-exploited and
oppressed. To the extent that these people are workers and they are
subjected to oppression outside the law applying to U.$. citizen laborers,
we can say there is a small Black and Asian proletariat. What we must be
clear about though is that only class sectors dominated by undocumented
work in the productive sectors form a proletariat. Not even all
undocumented people are proletariat or lumpenproletariat. A good portion
enters the petty-bourgeoisie immediately upon migration through family
connections and various legal fronts.

The vast majority of the employed Black, First Nation and Asian-descended
peoples is labor aristocracy or higher. An examination of the figures in
"Imperialism and Its Class Structure in 1997" makes clear that the
repatriation of profits from the Third World, the transfer of
surplus-value from the productive sector in the Third World to the
unproductive sector in the First World and the administrative fixing of
prices by multinational corporations to artificially lower prices of Third
World goods and thus disguise transfer of surplus-labor -- all these add
up to such an extent that is impossible to see any proletariat where there
is an imperialist country minimum wage in effect. That minimum wage is
almost ten times the average wage in the Third World.

[maoista]

The conclusive calculation in an upcoming ITAL MT END is to look at the
new wealth and profits of the imperialists every year and figure out where
they got that piece of pie. If the imperialists gave back their
discrimination profits to the internal semi-colonies, would the
imperialists still have the same new wealth added each year? The answer is
yes.

The imperialist countries are absorbing so much pie from the Third World
that even if discrimination ended, the imperialists would still be covered
completely by the pie from the Third World, without losing any pie. The
reason for this is that the Third World hands all of the people within
U.$. borders with minimum wage status using U.S. currency an enormous
piece of pie. Out of that enormous pie that also ends up in internal
semi-colony hands, the internal semi-colonies surrenders a relatively
small piece as discrimination profits. The class that would lose from an
end to discrimination is the white petty-bourgeoisie, mostly the labor
aristocracy. The labor aristocracy would still be eating super-profit pie,
but its piece would be smaller if the discrimination profits were gone.
The pie the labor aristocracy makes would still be smaller than it eats.

The imperialist piece of surplus-value pie is covered by merely one slice
of the pie that the Third World has to hand over to the imperialist
countries. If we look at the piece of pie called "transfer of
surplus-value from the productive sector in the Third World to the
unproductive sector in the imperialist countries," we see the following.
The Third World delivers bananas and sneakers to the door of imperialism.
Upon arrival in the imperialist countries, the banana and sneaker workers
do not sell them; salespeople sell them. These salespeople help the boss
make his profit and they get paid out of the surplus-value extracted in
the Third World. Surplus-value is never extracted from salespeople or
other unproductive sector workers that Poulantzas correctly refers to as
"new petty-bourgeoisie" in keeping with Lenin's teachings on the labor
aristocracy. The persyn on the street can figure it out this way. If all a
country had was salespeople and security guards, it would die quickly with
nothing to sell or guard. If however, a country had no unproductive
sector, it could still barter and create wealth, just not the usual way
under capitalism. The mark-up on Third World goods delivered to
imperialism is sufficient to explain all the new wealth of the
imperialists every year. The other pieces of the surplus-value pie can be
used to account for the obesity of the oppressor-nation labor aristocracy
and the internal semi-colony labor aristocracy.

Only the lumpenproletariat (e.g. making license plates in prison or the
minority of lumpen getting sub-minimum wage as a hooker or drug-dealer)
and undocumented workers face life without an imperialist country minimum
wage and similar laws. Workers making license-plates in prison may be more
objectively revolutionary than regular industrial proletarians. On the
whole, MIM looks to the lumpen and the undocumented productive sector
workers to form the core of that group whose economic demands we can cater
to somewhat successfully. Even in these groups we will have difficulty
though, because the pull of parasitic life in the labor aristocracy exists
for the majority and is clear to any persyn who looks
around--Euro-Amerikan, Black, Latino, Asian or First Nation. The tendency
will be for people to see that parasitism all around and seek to join it
rather than wage a class struggle to end parasitism.

It was a disappointment to see voting Blacks and Asian-descended people go
for Proposition 187 in California. That is the kind of extreme thing we
would expect to see from the labor aristocracy and other exploiter
classes. There were also key Black labor spokespeople attacking foreign
workers in bashing NAFTA. In 1998, there are die-hard state-hood
supporters in Puerto Rico who only wish to complete the seal of parasitism
on Puerto Rico. The state-hooders argue that all Puerto Ricans will be
entitled to more welfare benefits if they hook up officially with the
world's greatest gravy-train. All such people attacking workers outside
imperialist country borders represent the parasitic classes. Their
attitude of seeking to integrate with imperialism to re-divide the
surplus-value extracted from the world must be combated. On the other
hand, where the labor aristocracy is in dominant position relative to the
proletariat, there is a question of whether military struggle and various
other resources would be better committed in some other nation where the
imperialist link in the chain is weaker. The extent of the parasitic
classes in the minority of the world's population inside imperialist
borders is no cause for paralysis. We simply adjust our strategy to focus
in more fruitful areas than advocating the economic demands of parasitic
classes.

[redstar2000]

maoista wrote: We must recall that "having nothing to lose but chains" is the definition of proletariat.

Not exactly; that's the rhetorical definition from the pages of the Communist Manifesto.

The technical definition of proletariat in Marxist economics is any person who produces surplus value that is appropriated by capital.

[honky tonk]

redtar writes: The technical definition of proletariat in Marxist economics is any person who produces surplus value that is appropriated by capital."

This is wrong from several sides.

First the definition of proletariat involves the defining of a CLASS, not establishing a label for "any person."

Bourgeois sociology tries to develo class labels for individuals, marxism is exploring the relationship of classes.

Second, and more important, Redstar's definition of proletariat is simply wrong.

By his definition, only employed workers would be proletarians, and only while they are employed. (this would misunderstand, and narrow, what the social base of the revolutinary movement will arrise from.)

This reduces class to an employment status -- and does not see the emergence of a CLASS with a history, complex experiences, various strata, etc.

Many proletarians do not produce surplus value at all. Young proletarians are in schools (some are even in gangs). Some proletarians end up in jail (and don't stop being proletarians just cuz they were railroaded for nothing, or busted for a joint.) Millions of proletarian women do not work (but are raising kids in a marriage or on welfare). And millions of proletarians (actually hundreds of millions around the world) are out of work.

Some are even "permanent army of the unemployed" (to take Lenin and Stalin's term) -- meaning that they may never work.

The proletariat is the outlaw class. It is the desperate, oppressed and impoverished sections of the people -- who produce all and get next to nothing. For whom life is a corridor of slammed doors, who "have nothing to lose" in the largest and most profound historic sense.

Let me post the following from the RCP draft programme, which gets at the heart of "what is the proletariat" in a more correct and scientific sense.

---

from: rwor.org/margorp/progpart1-e.htm

"In the words of the Communist Manifesto, “what the bourgeoisie produces, above all else, is its own grave-diggers.”

The proletariat is that class of people who, under this system, can live only so long as they can work, and can work only so long as their work enriches someone else—the capitalist class. Their labor, collectively, is the foundation of society and produces tremendous wealth. But this wealth is stolen by a small number of capitalist exploiters who turn it into their “private property” and into a means of further exploitation. The proletarians are trapped in a vicious circle: they have to work in order to live, but the more they work, the more wealth they create, the more it is stolen and turned into power over them.

Acting as individuals, they cannot change this condition of enslavement. BUT AS A CLASS THEY DO HAVE A REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT.

The proletariat is an international class. It is more highly socialized and connected than it has ever been. Young women and children make the clothes and shoes in sweatshops for wages as low as 10 or 20 cents an hour in places like China or Bangladesh. Other proletarians then pack these items, and still others transport them to the docks or airports to be shipped to other parts of the world, where they are then unloaded, transported, and sold by yet other proletarians.

There is a proletariat in the U.S. that is part of this international class. The U.S. working class is large and diverse. Within it, in its most exploited and nothing-to-lose sections, is a hard-core proletariat of many millions who can be the backbone of the revolutionary struggle."

[redstar2000]

honky tonk wrote: First the definition of proletariat involves the defining of a CLASS, not establishing a label for "any person."

My, you're in a picky mood today.

Very well, I will rephrase:

The technical definition of proletariat in Marxist economics is that class of persons who produce surplus value that is appropriated by capital.

And that is the technical definition in Marxist economics.

All those folks that you want to "add in" to the proletariat--unemployed workers, housewives, children, retired workers, public workers, etc.--are fine with me. That would be a "Marxist sociological" definition of the proletariat.

You might use one definition or the other, depending on what kind of problem you wanted to analyze.

But your draft programme clearly gets carried away with its own rhetoric...

Their labor, collectively, is the foundation of society and produces tremendous wealth. But this wealth is stolen by a small number of capitalist exploiters who turn it into their "private property" and into a means of further exploitation.

Contrary to Proudhon, property is not "theft" and the capitalist class does not "steal" surplus value.

Surplus value is appropriated by capital without regard to the "moral character" of the capitalist -- who may or may not also be literally a thief.

It's an "impersonal" function of the capitalist economy that happens in every viable business enterprise, small or large.

Of course, it "feels like theft" to you and me and presumably to those who will give a sympathetic reading to your draft programme.

But technically it's not.

The RCP Draft Programme wrote: There is a proletariat in the U.S. that is part of this international class. The U.S. working class is large and diverse. Within it, in its most exploited and nothing-to-lose sections, is a hard-core proletariat of many millions who can be the backbone of the revolutionary struggle.

That phrase "nothing to lose" suggests a focus on unskilled workers and those, as you mentioned, who will probably never work at all.

A number of arguments, for and against this perspective, occur to me...but perhaps it would be better to save them for a separate thread.

[honky tonk]

I am amused by Redstar's invention of "technical marxism."

First he writes about "the technical definition in Marxist economics" for proletariat.

Then when I pointed out that his "technical definition" was wrong and (by definition) only included those who were literally employed in the proletariat -- Redstar then qucikly invented something new: "All those folks that you want to "add in" to the proletariat--unemployed workers, housewives, children, retired workers, public workers, etc.--are fine with me. That would be a "Marxist sociological" definition of the proletariat."

Then we get introduced to another novel concept, multiple choice marxism: "You might use one definition or the other, depending on what kind of problem you wanted to analyze."

Then later he says that while the appropriation of the wealth of society (from those who create it) ""feels like theft" to you and me and presumably to those who will give a sympathetic reading to your draft programme. But technically it's not."

Obviously Marxism has some technical manual that I don't know about. I'm not gonna ask Redstar to document where Marxism produced multiple definitions of proletariat (one "technical" and the other "sociological") -- cuz we all know it never did (before this new "ad hoc" sleight-of-hand defense of Redstar's free-styling bullshit). hehehehe, right?

there are no "technical vs sociological" definitions in marxism.

Marxism analyses classes in motion (through history and society) and roots them in their (overall, not personal individual) relationship to production.

And vast amounts of value (the so-called surplus value ) is appropriated, ripped off, stolen, snatched away at gunpoint, alienated from the proletariat by the bourgeoisie.

Redstar writes: "Contrary to Proudhon, property is not "theft" and the capitalist class does not "steal" surplus value."


The RCP Draft Programme wrote: There is a proletariat in the U.S. that is part of this international class. The U.S. working class is large and diverse. Within it, in its most exploited and nothing-to-lose sections, is a hard-core proletariat of many millions who can be the backbone of the revolutionary struggle.

Redstar points out: "That phrase "nothing to lose" suggests a focus on unskilled workers and those, as you mentioned, who will probably never work at all."

Actually there are increasing numbers of skilled workers in the "real proletariat" (that hardcore within the working class) -- especially among immigrants who come work in factories here and are not paid anything like their native-born skilled counterparts.

[lil bit o che]

Overall, I agree with Honkey.

The model economies in Capital are simplified models which only have 2 technically defined classes. I haven't looked at Capital in awhile, but Redstar's defination seemed appropriate to these model economies.

The problem is that these models are models, they are abstract exagerations of one aspect of the complex real economies we live in. They are meant to show tendecies in simple abstract pure capitalism where there is only a technically defined capitalist and worker class. But, nothing like these pure corn and iron economies exist. They are simplified models meant to demonstrate some point. Kind of like how engineers use pure geometeric models, even though pure spheres, triangles, circles, don't exist in the real world.

It is kind of the wrong way to think about it, to say "here is the simplified technical model economic defination of proletarian.. therefore all this other stuff is an add on". What Redstar calls the "sociological defination" is obviously the more useful.

[redstar2000]

honky tonk wrote: I am amused by Redstar's invention of "technical marxism."...Obviously Marxism has some technical manual that I don't know about.

Yes, its name is Capital...and it is a most difficult work.

That's why I always recommend Wage Labor and Capital and Value, Price and Profit to those who want to read Marx for themselves instead of Lenin's or Mao's gloss on "what Marx said".

lil bit o che wrote: It is kind of the wrong way to think about it, to say "here is the simplified technical model economic definition of proletarian.. therefore all this other stuff is an add on". What Redstar calls the "sociological definition" is obviously the more useful.

Almost always...but not always. And here's a good example of why we have to remember the "technical definitions"...

honky tonk wrote: Actually there are increasing numbers of skilled workers in the "real proletariat" (that hardcore within the working class) -- especially among immigrants who come work in factories here and are not paid anything like their native-born skilled counterparts.

In Marxist economics, skilled workers -- whether 10th generation Americans or "fresh off the boat -- sell their labor power for the socially-necessary price of its reproduction. Any economic discrimination against immigrants can only be a temporary aberration -- other capitalists will hire away the under-paid skilled worker...and her/his wages will converge on that of native-born Americans with comparable skills.

If Marx was right, it has to work like that.

This is not to deny the "sociological" aspects of the question; mainly the survival of pre-capitalist superstitions of all kinds. They have been dying for a long time...but their death is a protracted one. And, on occasion, they are partially revived -- at least ideologically -- for capitalist political purposes.

Nevertheless, material reality prevails over ideological considerations.

Some guy may think he's "really getting away with something" by paying new immigrants less than the real market value of their labor power.

But, if Marx was right about how capitalist economics really works, that guy won't get away with it for very long.

Note 1: Actually, I don't consider "Marxist sociology" an "add-on" to Marxist economics...but rather a logical consequence. People don't exist, for the most part, as "social isolates"...they have siblings, spouses, children, etc., all of whom absorb the class outlook (to one degree or another) of each real proletarian.

Note 2: The question of "who" is a proletarian can be a thorny one...even when using a correct technical definition.

Consider a public school teacher. She sells her labor-power to the state at a price sufficient to reproduce another school teacher in the next generation. But the service she provides -- "education" -- is not "for sale" to an individual consumer by her employer...so there's no source of "surplus value".

Or is there? The state provides this service -- "education" -- to the community at large and charges for it in the form of taxation. If the charge exceeds the actual cost of the service, then surplus value is present after all...it's just "spread out" in a form where no one can be seen to individually appropriate it. It's appropriated collectively by the "education" bureaucracy.

Supposedly, state-owned enterprises are run to "break even"...but that almost never happens. Sometimes they run at a loss and sometimes they run at a profit, and, most interestingly of all, we never have any way of knowing which is the case for any particular enterprise. If corporate finance is a labyrinth of disinformation, public finance is a black hole of ignorance and lies.

So, a good Marxist "plays it safe" and says that public employees are probably proletarians. The "indirect" proof of that is that public employees frequently act "as if" they were proletarians.

It used to be said that workers did not go out on strike in the USSR because that would be "striking against themselves" as the collective "owners" of all public property.

But there actually were some strikes in the USSR...and the workers knew exactly what they were striking against: the appropriation of their surplus value by the state/party apparatus.

Those "technical definitions" can be very useful.

[roman]

Redstar writes: In Marxist economics, skilled workers -- whether 10th generation Americans or "fresh off the boat -- sell their labor power for the socially-necessary price of its reproduction. Any economic discrimination against immigrants can only be a temporary aberration -- other capitalists will hire away the under-paid skilled worker...and her/his wages will converge on that of native-born Americans with comparable skills…If Marx was right, it has to work like that

Well, yes, this is a well known assumption in Capital: that commodities exchange at/in proportion to their labor values. In the long term, this can be described as oscillation around a mean, that in long term equilibrium, commodities sell at their natural, average, prices. This is why redstar thinks that any economic discrimination is only temporary and will get worked out over time.

This is part of Marx’s explanation about profit and exploitation. In making this assumption about commodities always trading at their labor values, Marx is ruling out the idea that the source of profit under capitalism is from “the sphere of circulation”. In other words, the capitalist isn’t making his profit from buying in one market and selling in another, buying low and selling high. The capitalist makes a profit even where all prices are static and set (as they are in his corn and iron model economies). Of course the big discovery, new value arises outside the market, outside the sphere of circulation. New value is produced:

“Our friend Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption, therefore is itself an embodiment of labor, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labor or labor-power” Marx, Capital

And, getting back to redstar’s technical definition, wage earners sell labor power (appropriated by capital).

If the worker labors for more hours each day than it took to produce his own laboring capacity for that day, more than for food, clothing, shelter, etc, then he creates a quantum of new value that is greater than was embodied in his labor power. This extra quantum, surplus value, is appropriated by the capitalist. This is one dirty little secret of capitalism.

Well, this is all very interesting stuff. It certainly says a lot about how pure capitalist economies might work. The problem is that this isn’t really a great description of the real world.

To answer your question in a simple way: Marx was wrong, or at least very incomplete.

The world is not moving in the direction of the pure corn and iron economic models. Pure evenly developed capitalism is not the historic trend. Your writings exhibit a kind of economicism and productionism which leaves too much out. Like the fact that 3 billion farmers are still engaged in peasant farming (Samir Amin in “World Poverty, Pauperization, and Capital Accumulation” Monthly Review Oct. 2003), that extra-economic forms of appropriation are still rampant in imperialism and neocolonialism, that uneven and monopoly bargaining power is everywhere, slavery, domestic labor and housework is exploited by the system, under development, settlerism. There is a lot more to exploitation than surplus value from workers.

I haven’t been able to reply as much lately, but I want to comment on something Redstar was implying in another thread about a labor aristocracy. Redstar was making the point that instead of looking at the settler/white working class as a labor aristocracy, maybe all the luxuries and education and benefits they have are necessary to reproduce their labor, since after all, their labor is more productive. Part of this claim is that more surplus value is extracted from white workers because they are more productive. According to Samir Amin, the most productive capitalist agricultural worker out produces the least productive peasant farmer by 2000:1. This surprising statistic would tend to support Redstar’s claims. However, it’s not like you can just look at productivity and profit of *this* production cycle and really get a sense of how much real exploitation is going on. You need to look at things historically.

And Sakai brings up another dirty little secret of the modern system. Massive past (and continuing) exploitation is bound up in the whole system. The technology, the land, the space of production is premised on massive genocide, occupation, massive plunder, massive slavery, continuing racism, and continuing under development, etc. Capitalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum nor do those genuinely productive American white labor aristocrats. You can’t just say, “whitey is more productive, so he needs luxury goods, education, benefits to reproduce his very productive labor”. You need to realize that the reason he is more productive is because he is part of an oppressor and occupying and imperial nation. He is productive because he is a member of an oppressor nation with a long history of exploitation - high technology that increases production, massive military might to protect production, massive military might to plunder and occupy, a relatively stable civil society and institutions, relatively stable markets, military might to protect uneven bargaining power in world markets - all are premised on past and continuing settlerism and imperialism. The whole damn technologically advanced productive oppressor nation is parasitic; the oppressor nation is based on keeping large segments of the rest of the world down.

Although I don’t agree with all of MIM’s formulations, they try to formulate this in terms of congealed dead labor. MIM states: “When it comes to understanding whether oppressed internal semi-colonies
are net exploiters through imperialism or whether they are exploited, it seems that genocide should be accounted for as an historical and continuing debt.”

There are lots of issues in here that I left out. This is a deep topic. I always like Redstar’s thoughtful posts, even though I very much disagree with him.

[redstar2000]

roman wrote: To answer your question in a simple way: Marx was wrong, or at least very incomplete...Pure evenly developed capitalism is not the historic trend.

Well, that's an empirical question where we can examine evidence and see where the balance of accuracy lies.

It's obvious that the development of capitalism over time is not "even" -- no argument there.

But what I would argue is that it's persistent...no place, however "backward" or empty of useful resources or even completely unpopulated is left to "rest in peace".

Right now, someone is designing Antarctica's first 5-star hotel...believe it!

Right now the Moscow-Vladivostok freeway is under construction...straight through the heart of the Siberian wilderness and the largest untouched old-growth forests in the world.

Right now (on another message board) there are some kids from India -- both Hindu and Muslim -- who are learning the painful lesson that not only is religion not worth killing for, it is intellectually contemptible. (Incidentally, they don't like hearing it at all...as if that ever mattered.)

Just as in Marx's day, capitalism continues to confront pre-capitalist economic forms, ideologies, religions, cultural traditions, etc....and eats away at them like a powerful acid or simply blows them up.

It's not necessarily a "pretty" thing to watch...you won't see much of it on the History Channel, much less CNN.

But as long as capitalism remains viable, this will continue to happen. And if capitalism were to last long enough...the whole world would be essentially the same.

roman wrote: However, it’s not like you can just look at productivity and profit of *this* production cycle and really get a sense of how much real exploitation is going on. You need to look at things historically.

This would seem to imply that past cycles have to be "taken into account". But to what purpose?

We can't "change" the past; history has no "undo" button. We can act in the present to have some influence on the future -- but there's no way to "make things just like they would be if such-and-such had never happened".

You could say to American white workers, and be speaking truthfully, that "your present prosperity, such as it is, would not exist had it not been for generations of black slavery".

And s/he would reply, "so what?"

After all, s/he owns no slaves. In fact, her/his ancestors may have emigrated to the U.S. long after the end of slavery. And even if they were here during the slave era, they may have owned no slaves themselves.

My ancestry, for example, does (according to family legend) go back to colonial times. But "we" were mountain folk (in what became West Virginia) who had no use for slavery or the Confederacy. Though unwilling to be shot at by angry strangers, we did sell corn liquor to both sides during the war. (Only silver coins accepted; no shitty paper currency.)

Put it this way: a historical argument that's regarded on its face as implausible will carry little or no weight...even if it's true.

roman wrote: The whole damn technologically advanced productive oppressor nation is parasitic; the oppressor nation is based on keeping large segments of the rest of the world down.

But the whole point of capitalist economic development (if Marx was right!) is that you can't "keep on" keeping down large segments of the rest of the world. Sooner or later, they will have bourgeois revolutions...even a whole series of them. Sooner or later they will acquire the knowledge and skills required to compete against the old capitalist empires. Sooner or later, their old pre-capitalist ideologies and traditions will become shoddy commodities for the tourist trade. Sooner or later they will have a modern proletariat capable of the next step forward.

An old-fashioned imperial despotism could enjoy untroubled rule for many centuries. Modern capitalism does not permit this.

When it comes to creating its own gravediggers, capitalism is in a hurry.