The COVID pandemic, economic crisis and climate catastrophe have all exposed the continued and seeming irresolvable divide between the first and third worlds. To many, this divide can be explained as a simple case of rich countries getting rich off the back of poor ones. This can find echoes in the left in concepts like 'unequal exchange' and the 'labour aristocracy', which argue that first world workers benefit alongside their bosses from the exploitation of the third world. This talk will provide a critique of these ideas and argue that the central divide is the same across the globe- one between the bosses that organise exploitation, and a working class who have an interest in ending it.