(Why) America's Challenge is Building a Society Not Based on Exploitation

[hedda_foil]

https://eand.co/why-making-america-work-again-is-going-to-be-harder-than-you-think-ffc16e6dfba

(Why) America’s Challenge is Building a Society Not Based on Exploitation
The Hidden Force That Defined American History — and Why it Needs to Change

America has always had a social contract — or just a society if you like — based on exploitation. This is the first time in its history that it is challenged to write a social contract, or build a society that is not based on exploitation — or go on collapsing, that is. One which transcends all that. Which really frees people from having to exploit one another, or to be exploited. If you think that sounds like an historic, epic transformation — which any nation is probably more likely to fail at than to succeed — you are not wrong. Or perhaps you think I’ve said something unfair and mistaken to begin with. Moooom!!! Umair’s being mean to me again!! Here, have some cranberry sauce. Truth — that’s for you to judge. Let me make my case.

American history can be broadly divided into three eras: slavery, segregation, and capitalism. What’s the common thread running through these? The common thread running through each great era of American history to this very day is that exploitation — only of different kinds — was its bedrock. The defining principle, the basis, the roots. Of society, life, politics, economics, culture, everything. In each age, different forms of exploitation — slavery, segregation, then capitalism — were the following things: the organizing principle of its society, the engine of its economic prosperity, the centerpoint of its cultural values and norms, and the linchpin of its psychology, too. But that is precisely the same thing as saying the following: exploitation has always been the force which has defined and shaped America the most and deepest.

<big big snip)

So America’s addiction with exploitation, its dependence on it, its adoration of it, which had begun with slavery, and blossomed during segregation, had led it, by the latter half of the 20th century, to reject the ramparts of modernity itself — which in the rest of the rich world expanded furiously into truer, more sophisticated, more genuine notions of freedom, equality, and justice. What do those three words mean in America today? The freedom and equality to…be abused and preyed upon by drug companies, HMOs, the gun lobby, the daily lies of fools and extremists of every kind? They mean nothing at all at present — and that is what Americans, at least the sensible ones, are fighting against. And that brings me to the third era of American history — the age of collapse.

<snip>

The problem in this age, the third age, the one of collapse was this. There was no class of untouchables or slaves left to exploit. And so that meant that everyone was going to get exploited — not just the unlucky few with the wrong skin color or religion or origin. Now it was middle class whites — the ones living the dream, at the expense of everyone else — who were in the crosshairs of the latest engine of exploitation, capitalism. That much was predictable when America chose to follow segregation with capitalism, instead of, say, social democracy — but it couldn’t, remember? It was already addicted to exploitation — and the addiction, like most, only grew and grew.

Today, capitalism exploits Americans to a degree that the rest of the world finds jaw-dropping — when it’s not busy laughing in shocked horror, that is. Nobody — nobody — else in the world suffers the following combination of weird, gruesome, bizarre things: regular school shootings, kids wearing bulletproof backpacks, medical bankruptcy, never retiring, stagnant incomes, no savings, choosing between insulin and rent or the mortgage. But all those are just textbook forms of exploitation — people being preyed upon as terribly as possible at their most powerless and helpless, like little kids doing “active shooter drills”, or patients being price-gouged for life-saving medications.

<snip> much more

https://eand.co/why-making-america-work-again-is-going-to-be-harder-than-you-think-ffc16e6dfba

[erronis]

1. Interesting proposition. And one that seems to be true.

Last paragraphs:

And that brings me full circle. America’s challenge now is, in my eyes, much greater, much deeper — and probably much harder — than it thinks it is. It isn’t about Nancy Pelosi or even Donald Trump and so forth, really. All that is surface. America’s challenge is, for the first time, writing a social contract, building a society, culture, economy, psychology, not powered by, grounded in, anchored upon, the poison of exploitation. It has been drinking that poison every day of its life — a drug, which corroded it from within.

Exploitation — like all the hardest of drugs — is a hard habit to break. But there is only one way to do it. Cold turkey.

Happy Thanskgiving.

Umair
November 2018

[brush]

2. What doesn't add up though is he/she says America followed slaver...

and segregation with capitalism to continue on with exploitation.

Capitalism has always been here, during slavery and segregation.

Straight capitalism can not exist without exploitation.

One good point is that working and middle class whites are now also being neglected as the greedy capitalists, not satisfied with just good profits, have exported jobs to cheaper labor markets for higher and higher profits.

Now everyone besides the wealthy are at risk and the vulnerable have been made vulnerable to populist phony like trump who promised to bring back jobs and prosperity.

[erronis]

3. Democracy Against Capitalism - an excellent look at their intersections and conflicts

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/11/24/democracy-against-capitalism-conclusion-of-the-conclusion/

This whole discussion in Marcy Wheeler's blog is so in-depth that I could spend days there, every day. Please check out the conversations.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/06/10/democracy-against-capitalism-introduction-to-new-series/

[hedda_foil]

4. Thank you!😱