Canada

Canada has a population of 1.5 million oppressed nationalities and about 750,000 First Nations peoples.(315)

England

We are a long way from the original proletarian dominance of the class structure that Marx saw in his day. Yet even in his day in England he spoke of a "worker-aristocracy." Here was an example of his class analysis of England in 1844.

"The distinction between skilled and unskilled labour rests in part on pure illusion, or, to say the least, on distinctions that have long since ceased to be real, and that survive only by virtue of a traditional convention; in part on the helpless condition of some groups of the working-class a condition that prevents them from exacting equally with the rest the value of their labor-power. Accidental circumstances here play so great a part, that these two forms of labour sometimes change place. . . . The lower forms of labour, which demand great expenditure of muscle, are in general considered as skilled, compared with much more delicate forms of labour; the latter sink down to the level of unskilled labour. . . . Laing estimates that in England (and Wales) the livelihood of 11,300,000 people depends on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18,000,000 living at the time when he wrote, we deduct 1,000,000 for the 'genteel population,' and 1,500,000 for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes &c., and 4,650,000 who compose the middle-class there remain the above mentioned 11,000,0000. But in his middle-class . . he also includes in these 4,650,000 the better paid portion of the factory operatives! The bricklayers, too figure amongst them."(316) Thanks to "accidents" of history, Marx was willing to consider bricklayers, who are productive sector workers, to be in the middle-classes. Later, inter-imperialist wars, and wars against oppressed nations would result in the creation of middle-classes out of people formerly considered proletarian.

With regard to the Census 17 years later in England, Marx said,

"If we deduct from this population all who are too old or too young for work, all unproductive women, young persons and children, the 'ideological' classes, such as government officials, priests, lawyers, soldiers, &c.; further, all who have no occupation but to consume the labour of others in the form of rent, interest, &c.; and, lastly, paupers, vagabonds, and criminals, there remain in round numbers eight millions of the two sexes of every age, including in that number every capitalist."(317) Marx notes with irony the expansion and exploitation of the productive sector allows for the creation of a sector of "modern domestic slaves" which numbers more than large portions of the productive sector. He calls them "modern," but he makes it quite clear these are just luxury expenditures of the ruling class, "the ancient domestic slaves under the name of a servant class." Hence, contrary to Shaikh and Tonak, Marx was suspicious of the service sector as bearing luxury consumption of the ruling class.

By 1948, in England, only 37.2 percent of workers were in the service sector. The rest were in the productive sector; although to what degree they were white-collar we do not know. As the government in England itself admits, "In the 1950s, '60s and '70s most men--certainly skilled manual workers and white collar workers--believed they had a right to a job for life." Hence, the split in the working class continued through this century and by the 1930s there were already those in the COMINTERN who thought the majority was bought off. By 1994, 73.4 percent of English workers were in services. Retail and banking jobs were typical.(318)

Today, about 5 percent of the population comes from oppressed nationalities, mostly Indo-Pakistani or West Indian.(319) Rapid growth in acceptances for settlement 1983-1993 from low numbers has occurred for Nigerians (663.9%), Sri Lankans (110.9%), Japanese (79.2%), Hong Kong Chinese (43.8%), Ghanians (141.1%), Jamaicans (309.7%) and Filipinos (76.5%).(320) Overall England is probably 6 percent oppressed nationalities as we write this.

Despite exaggerated claims by those who see a "general crisis," 70 percent of all adults in England have a job. Of that, 24 percent of employment is part-time employment. (321) MIM believes anyone who wants a job should have one, and the threat to one's integrity of not having a job should be removed. However, the communists should not make themselves out to be highly removed from reality. Considering that a certain portion of adults should be in school, retirement or recuperation, we do not necessarily want to push for higher than 70 percent employment.

Looking at figures for 1982, Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell conclude that the exploitation rate (s/v) of English workers averages 0.86. However, they made no deductions for discrimination, foreign profits or transfers of value from the productive sector in the Third World to the unproductive sector of England. Hence, profits that originated in extraction of surplus-value in the Third World are attributed to English workers.

We also disagree with Cockshott and Cottrell for putting in a graphic on the energy industry which shows that workers in that industry work 16 minutes for themselves and 44 minutes for their employers.(322) If they had done this to point to discrimination or undocumented workers, we would have agreed, but this is a different sort of issue within the working-class. After World War II, according to Yugoslavia's revisionist leader Tito, there should be "local" and "decentralized" socialism. The Titoite revisionism consists in introducing bourgeois pluralism and "market socialism." We internationalists object to the slogan "think globally and act locally," which is essentially Titoite and anarchist pablum. According to this reasoning, workers who happen to be in a neighborhood with a productive gold mine should be richer than workers who live on barren land far from industrial life. If a worker has an oil well in his or her backyard, then s/he should control it in the name of wresting control from bureaucratic, central authorities say the Titoites. We believe it is obvious this is an excuse for sweeping class polarization in society. The person with the oil-well is going to become bourgeoisie, while those born in backward areas will be exploited.

When we get to socialism, some areas of industry will have to be more capital-intensive than others. That does not mean we are going to transfer the value of the machinery in those sectors to the workers of those sectors.

Cockshott and Cottrell provide us some other important information as well. "330,000 people owned 55 per cent of all shares and 58 percent of all land." In addition, the bottom 80 percent only owns 4 percent of the property shares. Partly making up for this concentration of the wealth, the British labor aristocracy waged class struggle for the pie and depressed the share of output going to profits from 23.4 percent in 1950 to 12.1 percent in 1970. (323) Hence, Cockshott and Cottrell would not be among those making the mistake of seeing profits realized in a year as two or three times unproductive sector employee compensation, the fantasy implied in the work of Shaikh and Tonak. In 1993, compensation (about three-quarters of which goes to the unproductive sector) was fives times profit income.(324)

Finland

The 1988 breakdown of Finland was 33.1% services, 22.9% mining and manufacturing, 13.8% commerce, 10.3% agriculture and 3.4% unemployed. Thus we are inclined to say that Finland is relatively closer to the boundary line between having an exploited working-class and not.(325)

Germany

Even in Lenin's day, it was recognized that Germany is somewhat less inclined to parasitism than the other imperialist countries. However, it was only a question of degree and timing, not a qualitative difference. Lenin quotes a German of 1911 with approval: "People in Germany are ready to sneer at the yearning to become rentiers that is observed among the people in France. But they forget that as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned the situation in Germany is becoming more and more like that in France."(326)

Lenin quoted Census figures from Germany just as we at MIM do today on all the countries we analyze. By 1925, the percentage of the population that was agricultural in Germany fell to 25 percent. Despite this fact that he could not be referring to petty-bourgeois farmers, Lenin was of the opinion that bourgeois classes in Germany were already a majority of the class structure. When Lenin sent Zinoviev to make speeches on the German class structure, Zinoviev spelled it out in further detail that the overwhelming majority of German cities were bourgeois, not the capitalist class proper, but one form of bourgeois or another. Contrary to the Mensheviks who seek to Menshevize Lenin by selective omission, Lenin already had said the same thing, so Zinoviev was only reflecting Lenin's position and doing the work that Lenin wanted to combat the Second International and the social-patriotism of the ordinary workers of imperialist Europe. Lenin like Mao later had supreme strategic confidence that all the phony communists should learn.

"The conduct of the leaders of the German Social Democratic party, the strongest and most influential party belonging to the Second International (1889-1914), which voted for the military appropriations and which repeated the bourgeois chauvinist phrases of the Prussian Junkers and the bourgeoisie, is a direct betrayal of socialism. Under no circumstances, even assuming the absolute weakness of the party and the necessity of its submitting to the will of the bourgeois majority of the nation, can the conduct of the German Social Democratic party be justified. This party has in fact adopted a national-liberal policy."(327)

It goes without saying that if Lenin thought that the majority of Germany was bourgeois, even though it had no colonies and had lost World War I, the seal of parasitism had to be at least that great in France, England and perhaps some smaller imperialist countries as well. In contrast, if the unscientific Menshevik flatterers of the bourgeoisified classes look at the same situation, they do so only from the point of view of their own country and they conclude that they must alter the very definition of proletarian in order to avoid the fate of having to conclude that a majority of Germany is bourgeois one way or another. In recent times, some academic enemies of Leninism have become so desperate that they abandon the class perspective completely to take up post-Modernist anti-science which holds a multiplicity of equally relevant social groups none of which are viewed as any more progressive than the other.

Germany is also an important example to get a hold of the issue of what happens when an imperialist country is cut off from colonies and not allowed a piece of the action by the other imperialists. Countless bourgeois economists and slick propagandists of the capitalist system believe the Third World could drop off the face of the earth and imperialist economies would quickly adjust to only a slight inconvenience to their own economies. These economists do not understand that the huge layers of unproductive labor in the imperialist countries can only be sustained with the labor of others.

Yet when we look at Germany, the masses of the labor aristocracy decided last time around that rather than give up the hope of empire, they must redouble their efforts. In the three years prior to Hitler's seizing power (1931-4), the profit rate was actually negative.(328) Whereas the Depression hit all the capitalist countries, it drove the Germans to the most desperate outlook, because it lacked colonial exploitation to fall back on.

Initially, in Hitler's own work, the first priority was to straighten out the people of Germany and its own national question. The next priority was Austria and then Eastern Europe. In Mein Kampf Hitler claimed not to be interested in colonies. Instead, he pushed the arrogance of the German people to new heights claiming they just needed some living space to outdo all the other peoples of the world. According to Hitler, the contributions other peoples could make were so minimal that they should just be exterminated to save space. On this basis, the labor aristocracy gladly paid the taxes that boosted military production profits and restored German capitalism to a state where the capitalist class was resuscitated. However, we need to be clear that the labor aristocracy rejected the communist way out and willingly took up a strategy that depended on long-run military victory to be economically sustainable. The resuscitation of the German economy under Hitler was not proof that the German economy could do without colonies. Even while they claimed they were retreating from colonies and relying on the greatness of their own people, the German Nazis and chauvinist labor leaders had no way to make that happen. That will be the case until the imperialist country workers confront their own parasitism in the de-parasitization stage of the socialist revolution. Without such profound thought reform, the imperialist country workers could hardly have any knowledge of how to create a sustainable autarkic economy, the likes of which Hitler and Buchanan seemed to be promising.

Some may look at Germany in the early 1930s and say MIM should try to recreate that historical juncture but win this time. In contrast, we say that some decisive victories in the Third World could force us into that juncture again, but we would rather not organize to get into a situation like that where we will have the lower hand. Today, the parasitic classes in Germany have an even stronger hold on the society than in Hitler's day. In comparison with Hitler's day, the proletariat is virtually non-existent except in immigrant communities.

It may be unlikely that MIM will be able to explain to the workers in the imperialist countries their interrelationship with Third World workers. The most favorable context for teaching the imperialist country workers will be revolution in the Third World that cuts off the imperialist countries. On this score it is also interesting that the real industrial capitalists and bankers already know what the fantasy-prone academics and labor chauvinists don't know--that without political dominance of the Third World (access and stability), the advanced Western capitalist economies would quickly go into a tailspin. Absent such lessons of real life, it is unlikely MIM will get its point across, but that is no reason to abandon the course in order to unleash a movement that does more harm than good. Imperialist nationalism and war are ways out of capitalist crisis, because after the war if anyone survives, the means of production have been destroyed and there are new re-divisions of markets. The combination of the destruction of the means of production and the opening of markets even at their pre-war levels restores the profit rate. Such is the vicious cycle of capitalism, so whenever Buchanan, Le Pen and the neo-Nazis come to us and say they don't care about the Third World and will happily withdraw, we have to translate: "we are going to inter-imperialist war within the decade based on fanning the arrogance of the labor aristocracy and when those chauvinist workers realize they need the colonies they will support us in all-out war for control of the world."

As late as 1980, Germany was still the country with the largest productive labor sector of the rentier-states that the World Bank calls "High Income" countries. As we saw in the table earlier in this essay, in 1980 Germany had 43 percent of its employment in industry, five points more than the next closest country and about ten percentage points higher than the usual rentier states which were in the low 30 percent range. Still, it was a matter of degree and not a matter of overall difference in the class structures of the imperialist countries. We should not create a separate category for Germany. Even the bourgeoisie owns roughly the same proportion of wealth in Germany as the United $tates. The top one percent of families own 54 percent of "'productive assets'" in Germany.(329) By 1993, Germany was down to 36 percent industrial workers.

In Germany today, the government's official propaganda puts forward the usual capitalist nonsense about how to create jobs and move forward. For this reason, we understand how our German comrades are tempted to respond directly to the propaganda. However, it is a mistake to take on the German government on its turf of unemployment. Herein, we attempt to explain why.

Unemployment

According to the economic report of the German government of 1996, the first goal is to create jobs. Along these lines a partnership exists--according to the tiny percentage of revolutionaries, a false one, but in actual fact, a widely accepted unity of workers, government and employers.

"Since the 1950s Germany has developed into a society of consensus, a society which endeavors to overcome crises not with strikes, but with consensus. This is why there is such close and excellent contact maintained between employers and unions. Germans are deeply averse to strikes; rather, they place great value on social tranquility."( 330)

The government documents tempt the revolutionaries to engage in a direct battle for jobs. In the same document that the government says its main goal is to find 5 million new jobs, it says it is going to end early retirements, approve longer work hours for Sundays, attack sick day absences and see to a general speed-up of work. Although each of these latter steps would seem to worsen the unemployment problem by making more work get done by fewer people, worsening overproduction or by adding to the available workforce, the government seems to believe these measures will stimulate the capitalists to faster hiring to make up for these losses. The stimulus purely and simply is profits. No doubt this sort of direct rhetoric of alliance for capitalism incenses those used to fighting for the welfare state.

From the German government point of view, playing along in global capitalist competition means speed-up and cut-back or lose more jobs. "From 1995 to 1996 the aggregate contributions to social insurance institutions (pensions, health, long-term care, unemployment) rose again by nearly two percentage points to 41%." Such is an example of a serious cost cutting into profitability and weakening the incentive employers feel to increase employment according to the German government's thinking. In essence, if the workers offer employers enough incentive, there is no reason employers would not hire everyone or so the German ruling class says.

Avoiding temptation

The government argument is so clear-cut and stupid, that it is hard to avoid arguing back. Yet, we can do so if we take a look at the bigger picture. "Recent debates in the Bundestag have made it quite clear that nobody in Germany, no matter which political party they belong to, wants to see the social security net undone. On the contrary, it was proven once again that Germany still functions according to the principle of a society based on consensus. In difficult times Germans always look for a common denominator which they can use to solve their problems together. The 'Alliance for Jobs' is just such a common denominator."(331 )

The government only claims to want to shave a few percentage points here and there while increasing jobs and maintaining social security. The unspoken incentive for capitalists is a unified home front with which to go into global competition. Among other plans, the German government seeks Germany to be the biotechnology leader by 2000.

Recent class structure

One key figure emerged in the German government's complaints in the 1996 annual report. The government share of the economy exceeds 46 percent. That is a sure marker of a huge unproductive labor sector--parasitism. In 1960, 2.67 million worked in the civil service. By 1995 it was 4.33 million.

That figure excludes soldiers, which went from 150,000 to 213,000 in the same years. In his book Crises and Class Struggle, Willi Dickhut tried to show that an increase of taxation of the workers represented an increased exploitation of German workers. The problem is that he did not show where these increased taxes went. Now we see it went to hiring civil servants and soldiers from the oppressor nation workers and thus expanding their parasitic ranks, not necessarily oppressor nation capitalist profit.

One place we can be sure the money did not go was to an increase in Third World wages. Quite the contrary, the imperialist countries spend more money each year keeping the Third World under military control than they do updating business operations in the Third World. Partly this reflects that a relatively small investment of capital still brings a huge superprofit thanks to labor-intensive industry in the Third World.

Befuddled social-democrats argue that war and repression are too expensive relative to the profit obtained from the Third World, which they naturally underestimate in the fashion of all imperialist economists by treating the transfer of labor from the Third World to the imperialist countries as happening under conditions of free exchange instead of the reality involving force used to keep wages down in the Third World. These social-democrats try to reason with the capitalists to end militarism. What they don't understand is that militarism is a business too, a chance to make profits by sales to governments. If the labor aristocracy pays the taxes to buy the weapons, then the military sector capitalists are all for it. For that matter, if the labor aristocracy increases its own employability by paying taxes for military spending, then the labor aristocracy does not mind this either. For this reason some social-democrats have attempted to rally the peaceful sectors of the economy against the military sectors partly by claiming that there would be even more increased employment if the taxes went to non-military industries. Politically, we know that this argument is not working with the labor aristocracy, which follows the thinking of the bourgeois internationalists on these matters, whether consciously or unconsciously. If it didn't matter to the imperialists, the labor aristocracy would not care either and would opt for all butter over guns, but since the imperialists do care and want a chance to make profits in the armament sector, the labor aristocracy also cares. The better social-democratic line is also a bit much to swallow for the finance capitalists, who given a choice would prefer a diversified capitalist class to lend money to. The finance capitalists do not reason based on where the most jobs would be created but where the most profit can be made. The finance capitalist has no clear analysis that says workers should have more jobs or less. Sometimes they believe "demand" is the problem and sometimes they believe "supply" is the problem. They do not follow the issues anymore deeply than that.

The increased taxation of German workers is actually a barometer of parasitism. It is not an indication of exploitation of German workers, because while the taxes have gone up, government-sector employment has also gone up, thus decreasing unemployment and increasing demand relative to supply for oppressor nation workers. The people getting the jobs from government sector work are by definition German workers. Imperialist governments are the last employers to pack up shop and head for Singapore. Instead, what is interesting about the increase in taxation is that the German economy can sustain it. The only reason the economy can sustain such parasitism is that German capital accrues its share of superprofits extracted from the Third World. For this reason German workers increasingly work in the unproductive sectors, despite their historic reputation for being the most industry-oriented workers.

If taxation of Germans increased and government spending all went to to appeasing other imperialists, there might be some evidence of exploitation that would have to be tallied up. Shaikh and Tonak have shown that there are years in the United $tates when benefits to workers of government, strictly construed as commodities and services, exceed taxes. On the whole Shaikh and Tonak conclude that most of the time, the workers lose a little bit on the taxes versus government benefits trade-off,(332) but they do so by only the most economistic logic excluding the overall class position of workers. For workers to take a tiny hit in consumption to fund a radical expansion of its employment puts the workers in a better class position to bargain with employers. Unfortunately, it also put them in a better position against working-classes outside the imperialist countries too. So while the workers may lose out in consumption in the production of military weapons, they are gaining in employment relative to oppressed nation workers and they are gaining in super-profit appropriation when those weapons are aimed at the Third World. In some ways, the government sector is the ultimate expression of the imperialists' loyalty to the oppressor nation working class, since it is difficult to ship government service jobs overseas.

Another possible avenue of exploitation would be that the German capitalist class raids the treasury directly and then ships the money abroad as in the case of some family-run comprador regimes like Marcos's or Somoza's. Neither of these possibilities of exploitation of the German workers actually occurs to a significant extent affecting the class structure. The German government is intensely involved in directly providing parasitic employment, which cements the alliance of the labor aristocracy with the imperialists and assists in the realization of surplus-value.

The mere fact of taxation ripped out of its class structure context--particularly the international structure of class relations--means nothing. In the German context, taxation represents the social-democratic version of imperialist alliance with the labor aristocracy. Far from indicating an antagonism between the German workers and German capitalists, it is notable for proving what level of parasitism is possible in the current global context. In 1960, the government was 32.4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in Germany, but by 1974 it was 44.6 percent and it reached 49 percent in 1994.(333)

Percentage-wise, Germany is the most industrially-minded country of the advanced imperialist economies. For this reason if we prove that Germany fits the MIM thesis, we have proved that it fits the rest of European imperialism as well.

Germany exports 56 percent of its cars, and 20 percent of world machinery. Overall, the Germans export a third of their economic output.(334 ) However, even in Germany, what used to be the productive sector has declined while what Marx, Lenin, Dutt and analysts since have called unproductive labor in private services has increased: "Industry's importance has declined considerably as a result of structural change; its share of the gross value added by all economic sectors fell from 51.7 percent in 1970 (old federal states) to 34.6 percent in 1995 (Germany as a whole). In the same period the public and private service sectors increased their share considerably. In 1995 private services accounted for 36.1 percent of the gross value added." There are only 6.8 million Germans in all of industry.

Almost 5 million people work in commerce alone and another 600,000 work in the usual petty-bourgeois professions, 3.62 million if we count everyone who is "self-employed." Add the total 14.9 million in employment unconnected to production, commerce, farming, forestry, transport or communications--such as government teachers and soldiers (335 ) and we have explained over 4 out of 7 German jobs as unproductive before we have broken down the industrial sectors into paper-shuffling versus actual productive work. In terms of MIM's thesis regarding the imperialist countries we could stop here and rest our case on this fact.

Moreover, out of the 31.2 million German workers who are not self-employed, 15.7 million are salaried. This is another indication of unproductive labor from the standpoint of the COMINTERN's class analysis of the imperialist countries. If Germany is anything like the united states, then one-third of industry is actually unproductive labor as well. Hence, we estimate overall that two-thirds of German workers are in the unproductive sectors, parasites before any consideration of surplus-value and its appropriation and re-distribution is considered.

Italy

Below is one of the more interesting tables available from the imperialist countries.

VALUE ADDED AT FACTOR COST BY SECTOR AND BRANCH (%)

SECTORS AND
BRANCHES	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994
Agriculture,
Forestry and
fishing	4,1	4,0	3,7	3,9	3,6	3,6	3,4
Industry	32,5	32,4	31,5	30,5	29,9	29,2	29,6
Industry(a)	26,6	26,5	25,4	24,4	23,8	23,4	24,1
Market Services	49,9	50,2	50,5	51,2	52,1	52,8	53,0
Market
Services(b)	19,6	19,3	19,0	19,3	19,1	19,1	19,2
Non Market Services	13,5	13,4	14,3	14,5	14,4	14,4	14,0
TOTAL (billion lire at current price)	1052222	1150071	1261025	1367242	1444209	1477259	1555991

(a) industry less construction
(b) trade, lodging and catering services

Source: Italian Embassy in the United States,
http://www.italyemb.nw.dc.us/italy/econom3.htm

To understand the above table from the Italian imperialists, we have to understand that they do not look at things in the Marxist light. Essentially this table explains some other tables the Italians put out that show that neither industry nor agriculture is the predominant sector. Both combined are dwarfed by services. If we break it down further, the money in the Italian economy turns out to be in the market services sector.

What is convenient about this table for Marxists is that it shows where the action is in the Italian economy before any complex breakdown by sector or productive versus unproductive labor. If we recall that Marx said that workers in the commercial sector do not produce surplus-value, we will see from the above table that the Italian economy is bound up with realizing surplus-value, not producing it. It again supports MIM's contention that the job of the imperialist country working class in the system is not production of surplus-value but the realization of surplus-value.

In a country where only a small percentage of the people are engaged in this sort of work, retail sector or banking sector workers can be dragged into the revolutionary spirit by the more predominant proletariat. In countries where banking or retail are the guiding stars, we cannot expect the workers to share the outlook of oppressed toilers in other countries. So when we look at the figures above, we might as well be looking at the election outcomes in Italy too, where neo-fascist candidates have won Italian elections in the 1990s.

Japan

Given Japan's accumulation rate and operating surplus, if there is one imperialist country other than Russia or China where workers are exploited, it is Japan.

About 1 percent of the population is the usual oppressed nationalities such as Koreans and Ainu along the pattern understood in the West. In addition, there are another 3 percent or 3 million burakumin, who endure family incomes 60 percent of average. The burakumin are actually Japanese who 400 years ago were forced into definite neighborhoods to serve outcaste labor functions. Traditionally this group did all work with the dead and animals and today they are manual laborers.(336)

It is also recognized that living standards in Japan are lower than in other imperialist countries, with estimates as high as 40 percent lower. One Japanese professor says the cost of living is 16 or 17 percent higher in Japan than the United $tates or Germany. Yet, he says the Japanese have not figured out how to eliminate that difference without reducing employment.(337)

Against seeing an antagonism between the top and the bottom is the well-known fact that Japanese CEO's are no-where near as rapacious as their Amerikan or European counterparts. It also true of Japanese inequality generally. "In Japan, the incomes received by the highest 20 percent of the population total a little more than four times the incomes of the lowest 20 percent. In Germany, the ratio is a bit less than six times. In America, the top group earns nine times more than the bottom."(338)

The form of the labor-aristocracy/imperialist alliance has two peculiarities in Japan. One is that one third of the workforce has permanent or lifetime employment. The other is that 97 percent of firms have employee stock-ownership programs and in 21 percent of firms, workers rank in the top ten shareholders.(339) This is similar to the situation in the United $tates, but in less spectacular form than the labor aristocracy's ownership of airlines, grocery chains and rental car companies in the United $tates.

In recent years, "asset inflation" is one means by which Japan balances its book. Capital lying around gets poured into purchases of stocks and real estate. As a result in three years between 1986 and 1988, individual real estate owners saw the value of their assets increase by the amount equivalent to one year of Japan's GNP. "62 percent of Japan's total housing stock consists of owner-occupied homes."(340)

Switzerland

The majority of manual workers in Switzerland are immigrants.(341)

United $tates

Percent of the whole population with a job(342)

1950	56.1
1960	56.1
1970	57.4
1980	59.2
1990	62.8
1995	62.9

There were 11.1 million "Hispanic" workers in 1995. 42.0% were in manufacturing or farming.(343)

Endnotes