A question often raised by opponents of anti-imperialist Marxism and related lines of praxis is why capitalists should employ First World production workers at all if they are a net drain on surplus value. Whilst it may be admitted that the wages of unproductive sector workers can be considered what Marx called the faux frais (fringe costs) of capitalist accumulation, it is hard to see why imperialists would hire any First World productive sector workers given a certain capacity to super-exploit. In fact, the trend has indeed been towards the latter’s replacement by Third World workers, there being objective limits to how many labour aristocrats capital can afford to employ at a particular time. Nevertheless, there remain certain economic and political imperatives behind the First World’s retention of a production base. First, manufacturing is a much more significant job creator and sustainer than services. Too great a diminution of manufacturing in the imperialist countries would have a tremendous knock-on effect in terms of the wider market for jobs and goods. Second, some companies producing shoes, textiles and other such goods in the First World have managed to find a niche market in consumers willing to pay extra for items “Made in the USA/UK/France,” etc. Third, it may not always be possible to provide alternative, non-productive employment for First World workers displaced from their jobs by the globalisation of production. Fourth, and relatedly, the clamour for protectionism on the part of the labour aristocracy and the decadent middle class of the developed world sets limits to bourgeois “internationalism” (“globalisation”). There would be serious political consequences for the imperialist states should they risk losing the loyalty of their own workforce. Fifth, adequate supply of the domestic market ensures that Third World companies competing for access to a limited (First World) market must lower their own wages and prices, thus ensuring greater profits for Western corporations and investors. Finally, political instability in the Third World and competition from powerful rivals compels the leading imperialist countries to maintain a competitive edge in domestic manufacturing. Indeed, the First World may in the near future be forced to seriously curtail industry in the Third World and re-emerge as the world’s principal industrial centre. International regulations governing environmental degradation and labour standards should certainly be understood in this (protectionist) context.

Simply put, the OECD’s high-wage manufacturing cannot be driven out of the market by low-wage Third World manufacture because the latter is not in competition with the former. In the first place, there is a very real specialisation in the production of light consumer goods by the Third World semi-peripheries. Textile and clothing production, for instance, provides 30% of manufacturing employment in the Third World, but less than 10% of OECD manufacturing employment. Western manufacturing specialises in much sought-after capital goods and electronics production, but even within textile and clothing manufacture, the First World specialises in high-end, high-value-added production of suits, tailored garments, etc. Meanwhile, whilst much of the already limited Third World market in light consumer goods is catered to either by Western imports or by local subcontractors of large OECD-based transnational monopolies, Third World producers are very much dependent upon having access to First World markets. It is intra-Third World competition for such access, and not competition with First World manufacturers, which ensures relatively low Free On Board prices (that is, shipping prices for goods at the point of their manufacture and before they have reached their destination) for Third World imports. Underpriced Third World inputs and consumer goods allow for high ‘Value-added” to accrue to the products of Western industry at the global average rate of profit. This, in turn, enables the West to remain the most lucrative market for goods and investment.

It should, finally, be noted that oppressed national and colonial minorities perform disproportionate quantities of the productive labour carried out in the First World, allowing employers there to keep costs relatively low and retain the loyalty of the metropolitan “white” workers through the provision to them of more lucrative and desirable white-collar employment.

Whether done for reasons of institutional self-preservation, well-intentioned false cosmopolitanism or avowedly conservative proclivities, by presenting the bifurcation of the world workforce into rich and poor as the natural and inevitable outcome of national differences in economic efficiency, educational attainment and cultural norms, the Western left effectively promulgates a mollifying, but self-serving, ideology that obscures the imperialist structures underlying international political economy.