World Systems Theory and related concepts often come up whenever people try to explain why Westerners are psychotic counterrevolutionary scum, etc. It's often suggested that white Americans in particular love third-world exploitation because it directly benefits those same white Americans. We might say "White Minnesotan Joe Cracker wants child slavery in southern Africa so he can get his cheap electronics." And yeah, that makes sense up to a point...
But Joe Cracker might not understand the relevant supply chain or even the basic composition of his smartphone. He probably doesn't even know about the existence of said exploitation, much less its nature or purpose. Maybe Joe Cracker WILL revolt without his cheap goods, but he probably doesn't actually know what goes into producing them or keeping the prices down. So what decisions is he making that render him "complicit" in the profiteering of some massive international corporation like Apple? Falling for their ads?
It's also worth pointing out that his iPhone doesn't actually make him richer any more than a Hulu membership does. It's a cute little toy, but it doesn't obtain food, housing, medicine or fuel. It's a cell phone with a billion bells and whistles and a monthly subscription fee. One could starve to death with it in hand. Is this really the "wealth transfer" we keep talking about? This is the socialized bribery Americans perfected?
It seems to me that Joe Cracker is complicit in fuck-all. He doesn't materially benefit from low wages in southeast Asian textile plants even if he wears one of those shirts they make every single day. It seems that he's just a different kind of poor from the Bangladeshi serfs who make his sneakers, the kind of poor with tap water, McDonalds, and WiFi. Poor overseas workers make the stupid shit, poor Americans buy the stupid shit, and they both struggle, but at least Joe Cracker has some killer kicks to go along with the Taco Bell and the wireless internet in his shitty apartment. The Nike execs, meanwhile, can smoke cigars and watch the line go up from the VIP lounge.
"Bread and Circuses" seems like a much better explanation for the behavior of these Westerners. Who says Joe Cracker has a good reason for throwing his verbal weight behind an ongoing genocide in Gaza, screaming about nuking Moscow over a slice of Ukraine, and pearl-clutching about the 100 billion victims of Communism in Xinjiang?
Can you really be coerced into complicity, though? Complicity implies that a person could have made a different choice.
How much choice does a chronically ill desk admin have when their healthcare is tied to their job at a financial firm? How much choice does an individual dock worker have when it comes to loading weapons onto cargo ship?
They don't have much choice, do they? If we're just saying that the actions of first-world workers are necessary in perpetuating capitalism and imperialism, then yes, that's clearly true. But does that equal complicity? When I hear someoen is "complicit," I think of them as an "accomplice." Should I not?
I think you’re getting hung up on platonic definitions and clean boundaries between categories. Complicity is a spectrum, not a category. Dialectical analysis isn’t a court of law where it’s “guilty” or “not guilty.”
i think that's the crux of the issue when it comes to making core-dwellers understand that they do benefit from imperialism: they think it's a moral judgement on their character rather than a factual observation
Relatedly, I think it’s helpful to shed moral thinking, to see things through an amoral (not to be confused with immoral) lens. Philosophy prof. Hans-Georg Moeller:
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Fair enough, that makes sense.