Labor aristocracy in European and American unions supported imperialism and colonialism

Evidence

It was only a minority of these non-Black workers that would join with liberal intellectuals and freedmen to form the abolitionist movement. Du Bois had stated as early as 1915 that the “labor aristocracy” that was the result of the trade unionism of a materialistic labor movement—in Germany, England, and France as well as in the United States—was a crucial support to the imperialism and colonialism of the late nineteenth century. In the United States, Black and non-Black labor became politically opposed “instead of becoming one great party.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 944

Categorization

• XREF: Du Bois’s ‘labor aristocracy’ thesis dovetails with Lenin’s Imperialism analysis and prefigures later scholarly debates about whiteness as a form of wages — the reader’s institutional-knowledge mapping applies. — connects to: Fabian socialists endorsed imperialism as a civilizing force for workers — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 243