In Marxist theory, the labor aristocracy is the segment of the working class which has better wages and working conditions compared to the broader proletariat, often enabled by their specialized skills, by membership in trade unions or guilds, and in a global context by the exploitation of colonized or underdeveloped countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 days ago

https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy

Labor aristocracy (also aristocracy of labor) is a concept in Marxist discourse that describes a section of the working class (labor) who is bought-off by the bosses in order to stave off their revolutionary fervor.

While this tendency can occur on a small scale (for example, bosses paying white workers better than their Black counterparts in order to foment racial disunity and discontent) the term is most useful in the Leninist analysis of imperialism, where workers of the high-income economies are paid-off to weaken solidarity with their fellow proletarians in the low-income economies.