labour aristocracy
Towards a historical materialist history of Australian working-class politics
By Jonathan Strauss
The theory of the labour aristocracy argues that opportunism in the working class has a material basis. Class-collaborationist politics express the interests of a relatively privileged stratum of workers supported in their benefits by monopoly superprofits. Karl Marx and, especially, Frederick Engels, first developed this theory. It is most closely associated with V.I. Lenin, however, for whom it became “the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist era”.1
The labour aristocracy and working-class politics
The theory of the labour aristocracy argues that opportunism in the working class has a material basis.
