hi! I was discussing with a few different people about how the american working class relates to the means of production in the context of imperialism
so my setup is that in the context of imperialism, production of people’s needs mainly happens outside of america, and it seems that americans’ primary source of wealth and well-being comes from those superprofits
so then americans as a whole seem to have power in maintaining this system, from protecting it via participating in the military, working in jobs that manage this imperial system (e.g. finance, defense, etc.), selecting the american candidates that pursue their favorite imperialist policies (i.e the policies that give them a larger share of the super profits). in turn, the domestic capitalists in america need the support of the americans, so they and the americans come to an agreement on how to divide the superprofits from the factories abroad among them
so, in the broader sense of imperialism, it seems to me that american capitalists and the group of average americans share ownership in the means of production. what are everyone’s thoughts?
(I edited the post to make the context clearer, originally I had asked an abstract question about ownership that didn’t get at the imperialism context)
what aspect are you struggling with specifically? ownership is almost always used in the colloquial sense: ability to decide what happens to a certain object. so owning the means of production would be (for example) the ability to decide what happens to a factory, to whom the products of the factory go to, how the profits of the factory are distributed.
ah hmmm, maybe I should’ve asked the context of the question directly 😅 (I’ll also edit the main post with context). I was confused how the american working class relates to the means of production. so my setup is that in the context of imperialism, the production of people’s needs mainly happens outside of america, and it seems that americans’ primary source of wealth and well-being comes from those superprofits
so then americans as a whole seem to have power in maintaining this system, from protecting it via participating in the military, working in jobs that manage this imperial system (e.g. finance, defense, etc.), selecting the american candidates that pursue their favorite imperialist policies (i.e the policies that give them a larger share of the super profits). in turn, the domestic capitalists in america need the support of the americans, so they and the americans come to an agreement on how to divide the superprofits from the factories abroad among them
so, in the broader sense of imperialism, it seems to me that american capitalists and the group of average americans share ownership in the means of production, in a primary sense. but is there something wrong in this reasoning?
To put it very simply, Statesian workers do not share ownership of the MoP, but they recieve a share of the spoils from the class that does own the MoP as bribes.
this is how i would describe it too
To add to this, I think there are some assumptions in this reasoning that are worth addressing.
This is essentially how the system functions, but it presupposes more agency on behalf of the Statsian workers than exists in practicable reality. For example, if one is selecting one imperalist over another in an election, it’s worth noting the vote for imperialism is fully baked in.
Similarly:
It might be literally true that the domestic capitalists need the support of the Statesian workers, but it depends on what we mean by “support.” At present the Statesian workers do not have any viable organized resistance to provide any actionable counterbalance. The support is implicitly baked into the system as is, and of course the bribes, propaganda, systemic degradation of any meaningful angency, etc., solidify this. The Statesian workers have no real say in how the spoils are divided; they simply take what they can get at best.