First, I apologize for the late response.

Old-school Marxists thought that Western workers would rebel. They, as a rule, failed to rebel. When they did rebel, they generally did not violently overthrow the state and install a socialist regime. Nonetheless, they did achieve better working conditions. So, Marxism is wrong, right? Probably. I mean, this is a straight-up falsified prediction.

But nonetheless, revised Marxist theories are still held. Third-Worldists hold that first-world workers are not, let us say, true proles, but are instead labor-aristocrats. That is, they live in relatively close geographic proximity to the bourgeoisie and oppose it being overturned. In exchange, they reap benefits which the true proles, third-world workers, are not exposed to. This forum post seems to be a fairly good summary:

www.revleft.com/vb/another-view-third-t140405/index.html

Simply put, Third Worldism is an attempt to reconcile Marxism with the events of the twentieth century, particularly the latter half, since history has not proceeded exactly as the Marxists originally envisioned. Despite a continuing expansion of the productive forces and the concentration of capital into fewer and fewer hands, the conditions necessary for a new social order have yet to emerge. Far from triumphing, socialism has been beaten back at every turn. In addition, the so-called “advanced” nations, the First World, have found it possible to provide their citizens with all manner of luxuries that earlier generations could not have dreamed of, both in the form of commodities and social services, apparently giving lie to the Marxists' prediction that capitalism's development would push wages, and thereby the working class's condition, ever downward. And far from destroying the middle class, at least in the First World nations, it has preserved it, expanded it and enriched it.

Third Worldism offers a solution to this apparent problem, namely the theory of Labor Aristocracy. This term was originally applied by Engles to describe the leaders of trade unions who peddled opportunism and collaboration with the bourgeoisie. Third Worldists have expanded this to include all workers who have been bribed into servility. Under this expanded definition, the majority of First World workers can be called labor aristocrats. Bribed by access to goods, services and credit, their material interests appear to come closer into alignment with that of capital, precluding viable revolutionary action in the First World.

Ignore most of the forum post, by the way, unless you are interested in Marxism from an anthropological perspective. In fact, even the portion I quoted has a pretty significant amount of incorrectness. And yes, even the descriptive facts has a ton of implicit normative judgement.

Now, I am neither Marxist nor Maoist. I am not even particularly left-wing. I merely hold that our society has as part of its underclass, if it has an underclass, third-world workers. Their standard of living ought to be taken into account when determining our utopia-status.

We may be more utopian than any other society throughout history. Sure, fine. However, I do not see why our local lumpenproles should be considered members of our society when evaluating for utopia-status, but not our foreign proles.

(Apologies for the slang. The words are convenient for talking about this subject.)