It seems to me, your premise rests around this assumption:
Noelnada wrote:But still, the western proletariat (or lumpen) is privileged in comparison to the Chinese worker who work 14 hours a day to manufacture his iPhones.
And while this is accurate, it is not necessarily a problem in the Marxist conception of things:
Marx wrote:As long as the wage-labourer remains a wage-labourer, his lot is dependent upon capital. That is what the boasted community of interests between worker and capitalists amounts to.
If capital grows, the mass of wage-labour grows, the number of wage-workers increases; in a word, the sway of capital extends over a greater mass of individuals.
Let us suppose the most favorable case: if productive capital grows, the demand for labour grows. It therefore increases the price of labour-power, wages.
A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.
An appreciable rise in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures. Therefore, although the pleasures of the labourer have increased, the social gratification which they afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the stage of development of society in general. Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.
He concludes:
Marx wrote:Wages are determined above all by their relations to the gain, the profit, of the capitalist. In other words, wages are a proportionate, relative quantity.
Real wages express the price of labour-power in relation to the price of commodities; relative wages, on the other hand, express the share of immediate labour in the value newly created by it, in relation to the share of it which falls to accumulated labour, to capital.
And this is apparent. Someone who is poor in Britain, is hardly poor by the conditions of a labourer in China. But that does not mean that he is not poor by the conditions around him still.
Noelnada wrote:So how do you convince the french proletaire to vote for the PCF rather than for the FN, how do you convince him that his genuine interest as a class is to collaborate with other workers around the world rather than to protect his hard-fought privileges (good wages in comparison to third-world workers, social security nets, a fancy country).
In my mind, it still comes down to self-interest should the appeals to academics and whatnot fail. You don't want to lose your jobs as the French economy exports itself into profits only for the most elite? Then you must stand up and protect yourself by joining with the others that the capitalist seeks to exploit in your stead. The Vietnamese child may be in worse shape by French conditions, but it is a relative value.
Noelnada wrote:Not to mention that most left-leaning political organizations (including the PCF, i assume) in western Europe have abandoned the idea to organize workers on a international level and rather seek to promote the defense of the European proletariat relative privileges inside national or supraregional borders.
And this is one of the reasons why, in my humble opinion, the Wobblies are probably the best and most revolutionary group out there. They're not academic, really. But they're doing the unsexy work of building a foundation of workers' democracy on an international scale (in theory, if not reality). The west largely chose unions like the Knights of Labor in the United States that would ignore the international developments to their peril. It did not save them from the Great Depression, the Great Recession, or the, "
giant sucking sound," of jobs leaving the country.
In order to stop any of that, we need to view the world the same way that our masters do. We're fighting a completely different battle than they are.
Alis Volat Propriis; Tiocfaidh ár lá; Proletarier Aller Länder, Vereinigt Euch!