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Originally Posted by roachboy
the dunedan: what you post sounds like hayek or some such ideology about capitalism. there is nothing descriptive about it. the question here is not about what one wishes capitalism was: it is about the particular variant of capitalism that is unfolding in the states in real time, more or less. within this, it is about the politics of the concentration of wealth. the idea that you can separate the concentration of wealth from the economic system that enables it is not tenable. period.
you can wish capitalism was anything you like.
but that has nothing to do with the question at the core of this thread.
no-one denies that the problem of the distribution of wealth is of a piece with the capitalist mode of production---no-one who is looking at the empirical world, at any rate: that is at the actual history of capitalism as it has unfolded in historically.
not even american conservatives deny that there is a problem that follows from the distribution of wealth: they just think it is normal, natural etc. and that those who loose out in the game deserve to loose, are worth in every way less than are those who do not loose.
and they construct ideological fictions to justify this position---and insofar as these fictions acknowledge the problem of the unequal distrbution of wealth, they are preferable to those of a hayek or von mises.
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Originally Posted by roachboy
it seems to me that the information host is posting is an index of the scale and effects of conservative class warfare. it provides a good indication of what has been happening behind the screen of conservative market-libertarian ideology, behind the one-dimensional militarism, behind the jingoism, behind the demonization of the state and dismantling of regulations.
it is an index of the degree to which the right's response to globalizing capitalism is to give up trying to render the american system coherent.
"take what you can now, boys, the shit is going to hit the fan.
we dont know what to do, so taking short-term profits seem a good idea.
and dont worry about the social consequences: there is a nice extensive "security" apparatus set up to crush any and all coherent response.".....
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Yes....roachboy, you aptly described what I am trying to do here. Before you edited your most recent post, it contained a description of capitalism as one group that controls capital and the means of production, enjoying the ability to buy the service of the larger group which sells the only thing that it has to sell....the labor of each of it's individuals to the highest bidder, or words to that effect.
It is no "small thing" that recent tax "reform" included reduction of the percentage of taxation on capital gains to a mere flat fifteen percent, while providing no such break to those who sell their labor.
My great grandmother was born here....it is still one of the poorest places in the UK. The nearest village was at least 5 miles from the coal pits. The population swelled in the late 19th century to about 800. All of the housing units, about 200,were built by the employers. It is reliable to assume that the living conditions that my great grandmother was born into were as described....
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http://www.ayrshirehistory.org.uk/Bi...monos/amr3.htm
Rankinston
Glengarnock Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. Accommodation.
There are 148 houses in the village of Rankinston, arranged in rows of twenty at the top end. It is in the parish of Coylton, and belongs to the Glengarnock Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., with the exception of about one and a half rows, which are under the Coylton Coal Co. They are all double apartment houses, i.e.., room and kitchen, with a weekly rent or 2s 5d.
Closets
There is one earth closet, with a door, for every five houses.
Wash and coalhouses.
There are coalhouses, but there are no washing-houses.
Coylton Coal Co.
The Coylton Coal Co. have about two blocks, exactly the same as the others with same closet accommodation and coalhouses, one slight difference being that there is one washing house. The rent here is 2s 6d a week.
Population.
The population, roughly, is 700.
Water
There is a fairly plentiful supply of gravitation water.
Material and age.
The houses are built of stone, and probably between 40 and 50 years old.
<center><img src="http://www.ayrshirehistory.org.uk/postings1/images/rankinston_dlaw.jpg" WIDTH=466 HEIGHT=290></center>
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....great grandma emmigrated to the US in 1920....here immigration record at Ellis Island lists Rankinston as her birthplace.
My father, the oldest son of her only daughter, was the first in his family to go to college.
He earned a law degree. His father's family emmigrated in the mid 1800's to Northumberland, UK, from Ireland. The Irish who were too poor to afford passage to America ended up seeking work in the UK coal mines, but were mostly deemed unworthy to do that work, and instead, were employed in the chemical plants fed by the coal mines. The UK 1881 census shows, for my father's grandfather's brothers, such employment was the case.
In the early 1920's, they too, emmigrated to the US. The 1930 census shows that my father's grandfather, and Irishman born in Northumberland because of the never ending search of workers for opportunity to sell their labor, was a "janitor", at age 58, in a New England grocery store.
On my mother's side, here maternal grandmother could trace here ancestry to an emmigrant to the US from England, in 1635. She became pregnant with my grandfathe, in 1884, at age 14, by an Irish immigrant, ten years her senior. She married just two weeks before the birth of my grandfather in early 1885.
My point is, that for all of their moves in search or work, and in spite of my father's education, and my own, and my work experience since, I see no commonality with either side of my family, and the circumstances of the "rich". There is no family advantage on my mother's side, to ancestry in America, nearly 300 years before the great waves of immigration.
Almost all of us are eternally beholden to a system controlled by the elite, where are politcal power is bought from under us, where we are kept unorganized to prevent any advantage in our constant quest to sell our labor to those who control the capital.
I am puzzled that so few of us recognize our lot, or that we don't believe in organizing into strong unions or trade guilds, or why we are eager to reduce the tax burden of the rich, in our own time. Was my great grandmother's father, better off that an unemployed citizen, today, in France or Germany, because he "enjoyed" employment in the 1880 Ayrshire coal pits that affored him the miserable quality of life pictured above?
Isn't it obvious that the primary purpose of the Department of Homeland Security is to control us? Indeed, president Bush insisted that DHS be exempt from civil service and union regulations that benefitted the workers of that agency, as a condition of it's formation.