Relevant with the Markey comments on China today.
Also take a look at how many labor union bosses supported Guiaido.
This is just about union leadership and “socialist party” leadership. Like Kautsyites that supported the war because they got concessions.
Lenin is saying the concessions come not from a weakening of capital, but a strengthening of it through imperial conquest and those who tell the workers that concession is victory are philistines and “labor aristocrats”. The workers can always be saved, but their leadership has been corrupted.
Ahhh okay. So a certain type of opportunists, like you said in the union and “party” leadership, that support things like war in order to lie to the workers about what we get out of them is a victory, regardless of the outcome of the war?
Basically just corrupt worker organizations. Any group that claims to be for the people but takes capitalist payouts and supports the bourgeois state. The “national chauvinists”.
It’s not really just about the unions, it’s about labor aristocracy in general, the chunk of labor that has almost become one with their bosses.
Also it is obligatory to bring up the fact that Lenin also stressed the importance of participating even in reactionary unions. I think he discussed it in the infantile book.
