Well, yeah, it’s the pyramid scheme to end all pyramid schemes, not arguing against that. But that was the Dream.
And “not cheap” as in “had a wage,” as opposed to not being paid at all as a slave (although there were some costs involved with that as well, so not entirely free - I am not arguing for slavery in any way, I was just boiling down the expenditure). But wealth was clearly still pooled at the top, while most people were no better off than they are now, when talking strictly about wealth distribution ratios.
Edit: the only advantage they had was that land was “free for the taking” (if they were willing to do a little genocide beforehand), but even that ended up pooling around a handful of people once things and people settled in.
The disparity is actually skyrocketing moreso now, and steadily has been for the last century. The New Deal, as a response to the USSR, did manage to temporarily lower inequality, but corporations weren’t nearly as monopolized. The status we are in today took a long time, and for hundreds of years, disparity was actually much lower than England and other countries that had started capitalism in earnest. The semi-yeoman worker in the US had bargaining power and land, which slowed down tge process of disparity.
None of this is in defense of settler-colonialism. I bring it up because it points to the class character of the US, and helps explain why it’s so far-right and reactionary, as well as why leftist radicalization is increasing rapidly.
Yet again, I agree! But wouldn’t you also agree that the system always had this in-built inequality? What I meant to say was that, while it was less immediately obvious at the start, the subsequent pooling and acceleration of said pooling were always going to happen within this system.
And that’s why I suspect that this was the plan all along, because it has been visible from the start, it didn’t require a retrospective if one was paying enough attention. And those who did got very, very rich.
But even if everyone would have been paying attention*, there would be no room for equality, otherwise the entire pyramid would collapse, taking everyone’s “more than” with it.
Yes, I absolutely agree that the disparity we see today is a direct result of the former social relations. The agrarian slave-driven economy in the south was certainly going to result in conflict with the industrial economy based on wage labor in the north, especially as the north needed new wage laborers to expand industrially. Historical progression is a process of endless spirals, tendencies and trajectories accumulate over time until a quantitative buildup results in a qualitative change.
However, I don’t see it as something that was intentionally planned. Capital doesn’t think that way. Capitalist production is an ever-expanding circuit that must constantly be repeated, anything going against that system of voracious profit gets dashed. Long-term planning is characteristic of socialism, not capitalism, nor the semi-yeoman style of settler-colonial capitalism or slave driven agrarian economy.
This is important, because understanding how we got here today can tell us where we are headed. The historic task of the US proletariat in the age of dying imperialism is to topple the capitalist state and replace it with a socialist state, focusing on decolonization and anti-imperialism. The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. This is only increasingly possible because the US working class is becoming increasingly proletarianized due to monopolist capture of the land, and imperialism is weakening to the point where we cannot be bribed as much by its spoils.
We aren’t here because of some 5-D chess from the old bourgeoisie, nor did the settlers have ignorance of the system. The US settler class was bribed using the spoils of genocide, and its only increasingly true now that there isn’t really a semi-yeoman class. The immense brutality of settler-colonialism can’t keep the US afloat anymore, nor can imperialism.
I’m just trying to help provide a Marxist perspective, as it genuinely gives us a chance of completing the US proletariat’s historic duty. I’m a Marxist-Leninist.
Maybe you’re right, maybe I’m just so completely lacking any faith in greedy humans that I now suspect everything was a ploy. I dunno, maybe it’s one of the pitfalls of hindsight, that it can easily seem to have intentionality when the string of failures is so smooth and perfect. I mean, at the end of the day, Capitalism is, to my mind, uniquely insidious as a system.
Either way, I really don’t want you to think I was disagreeing with you about anything else, whether planned or not, it is most certainly worth learning everything we can from its evolution. As you’ve said, we need to have the future in mind, because this thing’ll be around for at least a bit longer…
Sincerely thank you for the theory! I’m not as versed in these aspects for now, so I don’t know where I’d land on the political/philosophical spectrum exactly. All I know is that I sincerely want everyone to have a truly fair chance at life without having to worry about being persecuted for who they are, without having to be relatively rich to afford basic healthcare (I’m including the various hormone therapies here because it’s well past time we grew the fuck up and stopped obsessing about other people’s genitals, as… uuh… someone smarter than me put it) and without the fear that they may starve or become homeless, ffs… And I also know that what we’ve been doing so far obviously ain’t it…
Modes of production are historical phenomena, guided by technological advancements. Capitalism wasn’t a choice, but a result of growing industrial bourgeois production resolving its contradiction with feudal agrarian production. The steam engine is what accelerated this process. Zooming out, capital is the real master of capitalists, capitalists are merely the high priests of capital best guessing at what it wants, but ultimately are slaves to the profit motive and how to best extract it.
And no worries! One thing that’s helpful, is that the centralization of capitalism over time is exactly what creates a large class capable of collectively planning and running production in the interests of all. The profit motive destroys the profit motive. I try to maintain revolutionary optimism, doomerism is more of a product of the capitalist class trying to remove revolutionary fervor.
Based on your final paragraph, you’d do well with reading leftist theory! I already said I’m a Marxist-Leninist, I actually made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list if you want to spend some time on theory, but you can explore whatever leftist tendencies you want to. The two biggest umbrellas are anarchism and Marxism, the former being about decentralization and horizontalism, the latter being about centralization and collectivization (to massively oversimplify), and the biggest tendency in Marxism is Marxism-Leninism. If you want to learn more about what makes these distinct, feel free to ask, I used to be an anarchist myself.
Also, if you can, join an org! If you’re US-based, I recommend something like The Party for Socialism and Liberation. There are probably other orgs local to you, though, so do some shopping around. Getting organized is the only way out of this mess, and into the new. A better world is possible!
Well, yeah, it’s the pyramid scheme to end all pyramid schemes, not arguing against that. But that was the Dream.
And “not cheap” as in “had a wage,” as opposed to not being paid at all as a slave (although there were some costs involved with that as well, so not entirely free - I am not arguing for slavery in any way, I was just boiling down the expenditure). But wealth was clearly still pooled at the top, while most people were no better off than they are now, when talking strictly about wealth distribution ratios.
Edit: the only advantage they had was that land was “free for the taking” (if they were willing to do a little genocide beforehand), but even that ended up pooling around a handful of people once things and people settled in.
The disparity is actually skyrocketing moreso now, and steadily has been for the last century. The New Deal, as a response to the USSR, did manage to temporarily lower inequality, but corporations weren’t nearly as monopolized. The status we are in today took a long time, and for hundreds of years, disparity was actually much lower than England and other countries that had started capitalism in earnest. The semi-yeoman worker in the US had bargaining power and land, which slowed down tge process of disparity.
None of this is in defense of settler-colonialism. I bring it up because it points to the class character of the US, and helps explain why it’s so far-right and reactionary, as well as why leftist radicalization is increasing rapidly.
Yet again, I agree! But wouldn’t you also agree that the system always had this in-built inequality? What I meant to say was that, while it was less immediately obvious at the start, the subsequent pooling and acceleration of said pooling were always going to happen within this system.
And that’s why I suspect that this was the plan all along, because it has been visible from the start, it didn’t require a retrospective if one was paying enough attention. And those who did got very, very rich.
But even if everyone would have been paying attention*, there would be no room for equality, otherwise the entire pyramid would collapse, taking everyone’s “more than” with it.
Yes, I absolutely agree that the disparity we see today is a direct result of the former social relations. The agrarian slave-driven economy in the south was certainly going to result in conflict with the industrial economy based on wage labor in the north, especially as the north needed new wage laborers to expand industrially. Historical progression is a process of endless spirals, tendencies and trajectories accumulate over time until a quantitative buildup results in a qualitative change.
However, I don’t see it as something that was intentionally planned. Capital doesn’t think that way. Capitalist production is an ever-expanding circuit that must constantly be repeated, anything going against that system of voracious profit gets dashed. Long-term planning is characteristic of socialism, not capitalism, nor the semi-yeoman style of settler-colonial capitalism or slave driven agrarian economy.
This is important, because understanding how we got here today can tell us where we are headed. The historic task of the US proletariat in the age of dying imperialism is to topple the capitalist state and replace it with a socialist state, focusing on decolonization and anti-imperialism. The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. This is only increasingly possible because the US working class is becoming increasingly proletarianized due to monopolist capture of the land, and imperialism is weakening to the point where we cannot be bribed as much by its spoils.
We aren’t here because of some 5-D chess from the old bourgeoisie, nor did the settlers have ignorance of the system. The US settler class was bribed using the spoils of genocide, and its only increasingly true now that there isn’t really a semi-yeoman class. The immense brutality of settler-colonialism can’t keep the US afloat anymore, nor can imperialism.
I’m just trying to help provide a Marxist perspective, as it genuinely gives us a chance of completing the US proletariat’s historic duty. I’m a Marxist-Leninist.
Maybe you’re right, maybe I’m just so completely lacking any faith in greedy humans that I now suspect everything was a ploy. I dunno, maybe it’s one of the pitfalls of hindsight, that it can easily seem to have intentionality when the string of failures is so smooth and perfect. I mean, at the end of the day, Capitalism is, to my mind, uniquely insidious as a system.
Either way, I really don’t want you to think I was disagreeing with you about anything else, whether planned or not, it is most certainly worth learning everything we can from its evolution. As you’ve said, we need to have the future in mind, because this thing’ll be around for at least a bit longer…
Sincerely thank you for the theory! I’m not as versed in these aspects for now, so I don’t know where I’d land on the political/philosophical spectrum exactly. All I know is that I sincerely want everyone to have a truly fair chance at life without having to worry about being persecuted for who they are, without having to be relatively rich to afford basic healthcare (I’m including the various hormone therapies here because it’s well past time we grew the fuck up and stopped obsessing about other people’s genitals, as… uuh… someone smarter than me put it) and without the fear that they may starve or become homeless, ffs… And I also know that what we’ve been doing so far obviously ain’t it…
Modes of production are historical phenomena, guided by technological advancements. Capitalism wasn’t a choice, but a result of growing industrial bourgeois production resolving its contradiction with feudal agrarian production. The steam engine is what accelerated this process. Zooming out, capital is the real master of capitalists, capitalists are merely the high priests of capital best guessing at what it wants, but ultimately are slaves to the profit motive and how to best extract it.
And no worries! One thing that’s helpful, is that the centralization of capitalism over time is exactly what creates a large class capable of collectively planning and running production in the interests of all. The profit motive destroys the profit motive. I try to maintain revolutionary optimism, doomerism is more of a product of the capitalist class trying to remove revolutionary fervor.
Based on your final paragraph, you’d do well with reading leftist theory! I already said I’m a Marxist-Leninist, I actually made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list if you want to spend some time on theory, but you can explore whatever leftist tendencies you want to. The two biggest umbrellas are anarchism and Marxism, the former being about decentralization and horizontalism, the latter being about centralization and collectivization (to massively oversimplify), and the biggest tendency in Marxism is Marxism-Leninism. If you want to learn more about what makes these distinct, feel free to ask, I used to be an anarchist myself.
Also, if you can, join an org! If you’re US-based, I recommend something like The Party for Socialism and Liberation. There are probably other orgs local to you, though, so do some shopping around. Getting organized is the only way out of this mess, and into the new. A better world is possible!