Kasama's post from witbd

Some points on this:

1) Where does surplus value come from? It comes from the exploitation of human labor power under capitalism. It is the difference between the wealth created by proletarians, and the tiny amounts they take home as wages. It is the amount that the capitalist takes, and then directs within society to expand the capitalists' means of making more profit.

2) MIM puts forward a fundamentally mistaken analysis of where it comes from geographically.

They suggest that most suprlus value for U.S. imperialism comes from the oppressed countries (the third world) -- and they suggest from this that there is not an exploited class WITHIN the u.s. And they charge (falsely) that workers in the u.s. ABSORB surplus value, rather than produce it.

This is wrong on every level -- as literally any geographical study of imperialist profit figures shows.

3) Imperialist capital is both deeply international, and rooted in a national market. it is rooted in that national market because (overall and generally) the vast majority of surplus value absorbed by the U.S. capitalist class is generated inside the U.S. (by proletarians there). The seocnd greatest source of profit (which is a crude equivalent of surplus value) is from inevestments the U.S. imperialists make in other imperialist countries (Canada, Germany, Japan etc.)

The third and smallest source of surplus value is from U.S. corporate investments in the third world.

4) Does this mean that the imperialist investments in the third world are not important to imperialism? Not at all.

For one thing, which the quantitative amounts of surplus value from the third world are the bulk of profits -- the RATE OF PROFIT from third world investments is much higher than from other investments (like those within the U.S. itself). Also the cheapness of labor in the third world is key to making many of the other investments profitable and realizable. So most of the auto industry may not be in Mexico, but the fact that the cars are increasingly ASSEMBLED in Mexico, means that the whole U.S. corporate process of producing cars is cheaper and more profitable.

5) Some significant sections of the working class in the u.s. are paid at roughly the value of their labor power. (I.e. this is a scientific way of saying they are exploited as proletrians by capital.) This means the workers only make enough money to drag themselves back to work and barely raise their kids to be the next exploited generation.

There are other sections that also produce far more value than they are paid -- but they are not paid only the "value of their labor power." This means they make more than the bare minimum to live. Are they still exploited? yes. Do they still produce surplus value? Yes, often huge amounts. Are they a little better off than workers elsewhere in the world? Sure. Do they still have interests in seeing socialism come? Yes, overall the largest sections of the working class in the U.S. have a definite class interest in socialism, even if some strata in that class live better than workers in the third world.

Summation: Imperialist export of capital to the third world is crucial to modern capitalism in any ways, but it does not mean that workers WITHIN the u.s. are not exploited or do not produce surplus value.