Lenin and the "Aristocracy of Labor"

Abstract

The following brief essay is a contribution to the discussion of Lenin's thought, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The subject is one which can be appropriately treated by a British Marxist, since the concept of of labor is one which Lenin clearly derived from the history of British nineteenth-century capitalism. His concrete references to the of labor as a stratum of the working class appear to be exclusively drawn from Britain…. The term itself is almost certainly derived from a passage by Engels written in 1885 and reprinted in the introduction to the 1892 edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 which speaks of the great English trade unions as forming an aristocracy among the working class.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.