Lee Harris: The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing
Part 4 – Immiserization Goes Global (Policy Review, 2002)
When the classical Marxist prediction of proletarian immiserization failed to materialize in advanced capitalist societies after World War II, some theorists adapted the concept. Paul Baran (1957) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) argued that capitalism no longer immiserized domestic workers but instead transferred exploitation globally: the prosperity of the developed world was built on the deliberate impoverishment of the Third World.
This “Baran-Wallerstein revision” preserved the moral structure of Marxism (oppressor vs. oppressed) while explaining why revolution had not occurred in the West. The locus of immiserization shifted from class to nation, with the United States increasingly cast as the primary agent of global exploitation.
Harris contends this intellectual move provided a new foundation for systemic anti-Americanism, allowing critics to maintain Marxist analytical categories despite empirical contradictions.
Next: Part 5 – America as “Root Cause”
