Thus spake Frederick Douglass who, while he wrote that in 1857, lived until 1895, well into the perversely-named Gilded Age of American capitalism.
It is a little hard to miss the parallels between the period we are entering and that period of a little over a century ago.
It's not just the obscene and increasing disparities of wealth distribution that should concern us. The real problem is that wealth buys power. It buys influence in all levels of government (accelerated by the Citizens United decision), and public opinion via ownership of media and think tanks. An unequal distribution of yachts does not imperil democracy, but an unequal distribution of power most certainly does.
The conventional overview of U.S. history holds that the excesses of the Gilded Age led to financial collapse in 1993, which opened the door to the reforms of the Progressive Era, which in turn ended amid the nationalism and repression of World War I. Then another period of unrestrained capitalism leading another crash in 1929 and the reforms of the New Deal. Then another pendulum swing back to unfettered capitalism (called "neo-liberalism" internationally) starting around 1980, and accelerating the present day.
What is missing from that simplified overview is the organized Left as a historical actor.
I am not a historian, but I am aware of the struggles of organized labor in the late 19th century, and the prominence of anarchists, socialists and groups such as the IWW around the turn of that century. How significant was it that these forces were ready to take advantage of the political upheaval caused by economic downturn, and achieve reforms from the power structure, who may have viewed them as an alternative to revolution?
Similarly, in the 1930s, the Left we very active and organized, both in reformist and revolutionary sectors, with the Soviet Union as a model, for many, of a tangible alternative to capitalism.
(Indeed, one might argue that the approximately 75-year experiment in Soviet-style Communism represents a deviant tendency in the historic arc of democratic socialism, but that will be the topic of another blog post.)
What this historical overview suggests to me is that capitalism inexorably evolves toward plutocracy (and repression) until it is arrested and reformed by popular Left organization following economic downturn.
Plutocracy? Check. Repression? Check. Economic collapse? Check. Popular Left organization? [crickets]
What happens when there is no check on capitalism's sociopathic tendencies?
Would you care to answer that question for the class, Frederick?
It is a little hard to miss the parallels between the period we are entering and that period of a little over a century ago.
It's not just the obscene and increasing disparities of wealth distribution that should concern us. The real problem is that wealth buys power. It buys influence in all levels of government (accelerated by the Citizens United decision), and public opinion via ownership of media and think tanks. An unequal distribution of yachts does not imperil democracy, but an unequal distribution of power most certainly does.
The conventional overview of U.S. history holds that the excesses of the Gilded Age led to financial collapse in 1993, which opened the door to the reforms of the Progressive Era, which in turn ended amid the nationalism and repression of World War I. Then another period of unrestrained capitalism leading another crash in 1929 and the reforms of the New Deal. Then another pendulum swing back to unfettered capitalism (called "neo-liberalism" internationally) starting around 1980, and accelerating the present day.
What is missing from that simplified overview is the organized Left as a historical actor.
I am not a historian, but I am aware of the struggles of organized labor in the late 19th century, and the prominence of anarchists, socialists and groups such as the IWW around the turn of that century. How significant was it that these forces were ready to take advantage of the political upheaval caused by economic downturn, and achieve reforms from the power structure, who may have viewed them as an alternative to revolution?
Similarly, in the 1930s, the Left we very active and organized, both in reformist and revolutionary sectors, with the Soviet Union as a model, for many, of a tangible alternative to capitalism.
(Indeed, one might argue that the approximately 75-year experiment in Soviet-style Communism represents a deviant tendency in the historic arc of democratic socialism, but that will be the topic of another blog post.)
What this historical overview suggests to me is that capitalism inexorably evolves toward plutocracy (and repression) until it is arrested and reformed by popular Left organization following economic downturn.
Plutocracy? Check. Repression? Check. Economic collapse? Check. Popular Left organization? [crickets]
What happens when there is no check on capitalism's sociopathic tendencies?
Would you care to answer that question for the class, Frederick?
