labor aristocracy

English

Alternative forms

• labour aristocracy
• aristocracy of labour, (US) aristocracy of labor

Noun

labor aristocracy (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of labour aristocracy
   • 1900, Paul Delasalle, L'action syndicale et les anarchistes‎^[1], page 15; indirect English translation from Alias Recluse, transl., Anarchists and the Trade Unions‎^[2], translation of La acción sindical y los anarquistas (in Spanish), 2013:

     Finally, as anarchists, we can always prevent the trade union movement from deviating towards an authoritarian organization or from creating a labor aristocracy.

     [original: Enfin nous pouvons toujours, en tant qu’anarchistes, empêcher le mouvement syndical de tomber dans les rouages d’une organisation autoritaire ou de créer une aristocratie ouvrière.]

   • April 1901, Karl Kautsky, “Trades Unions and Socialism”, in Eugene Dietzgen, transl., International Socialist Review‎^[3], volume 1, number 10, page 595:

     The increase of duties, resulting herefrom, is compensated by having the economic and political basis of their achievements rendered more solid than that of the achievements of a labor aristocracy.

   • 1974 [1972], Michael Velli with Lorraine Perlman, “III. Seizure of State Power”, in Manual For Revolutionary Leaders (Second Edition Including The Sources Of Velli's Thoughts), page 210:

     This is why the theory of class consciousness characterizes such workers as privileged, as a labor aristocracy, as a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. The distinguishing characteristic of the theory of the labor aristocracy is that, from its standpoint, the industrial workers in the metropoles of imperialism are not merely prisoners of bourgeois ideology, — they have deserted to the bourgeoisie.

   • 1995, Murray Bookchin, “3: The new Malthusians”, in Re-enchanting Humanity‎^[4], page 71:

     Dissolute scions of British noble houses, predatory bankers and industrialists, even small proprietors and manufacturers with ‘expectations’, and various strata of the labor aristocracy could now conceive of themselves as ‘nature’s elect’, the product of natural selection and the ‘survival of the fittest’ transposed to the social realm.