Shit sucks man
That’s the narrative they teach us, the puritan culture of rigorous labor as penance to God and devout, evangelical Protestantism is what American culture was born out of. However, I think this is bullshit. Yes, the Puritans were early settlers in America, but they were also far from the only ones. Furthermore, their culture pretty much collapsed under the weight of their paranoia and extremism; there’s a reason there’s no significant traces of Puritan culture in New England, while most of the evangelical fanaticism in America is in the South, Midwest and Great Plains, which derived out of unrelated cultures and sects.
The Puritans as Ur American Culture exists less for its historical accuracy and more that it’s a convenient narrative for the bourgeoisie: shoot yourselves up with the opiate of the masses, and don’t whine about things like wage theft because that makes you a sinner in the eyes of God.
Nah, hte calvinist god loves you because you work hard and you work hard because god loves you WASP shit came out of the north. The evangelical fascism is an American local product dating to like hte mid/late 1800s and the second great revival. It's a whole complicated thing, mostly grew out of the necessity to create a society that could view slavery as a virtue. In both places it's very much post-Calvinist protestantism and it's attitudes on labor, society, and being a shit to your neighbors.
Yes, it was derived out of the North, my issue is the singularness that the narrative ascribes to that northern Puritanism. Like you said, it’s a complicated beast with a lot of different inputs but the way the narrative gets presented, it’s everything descends from the Puritans. Like, Jamestown predates the northern settlements but they weren’t puritans.
New England opium of the masses
Pretty sure it’s just opium. Sad places up there.
Shy guy in the corner alone at a party: "they don't know the western anti-communist brain worms still permeating today come from Puritans assigning moral value to the act of labor"
Other party goers dancing: "that guy should get working instead of standing in the corner"
Capitalism relied on the labor theory of value, until recent decades when layoffs started to increase a companies value.
As at this point, the ideal corporation has no workers or locations or product, but is merely rent collection.
It’s a complete mystery to liberalism. But it’s the purest form of capitalism.
Does that mean be gay do crime is cancelled if crime is the purest form of capitalism? I liked that slogan tbh
Gotcha. Wasn’t sure where the line was (could have jus meant organized crime or something too, hence the asking). Thanks
at this point, the ideal corporation has no workers or locations or product, but is merely rent collection.
That's like 20% of the fortune 500 at least. The rest are hybrid rent collection and mass layoffs.
Another thing is that they realized coordinating layoffs works well because it lets them re-hire the same people on new terms without giving them a chance to organize it negotiate.
Plus a lot of companies in the West are primarily administrative at this point, so the value comes mostly from someone else's labor somewhere else and the western admin worker is getting a cut of that person's surplus, which means firing tons of them leaves more for the capitalist until the administrative system starts to crumble do to lack of productive labor.
It is kind of fascinating how a lot of early US religious beliefs were co-opted into their quasi-religious worship of capitalism. Reminds me a lot of missionaries, who would go around co-opting parts of indigenous religious belief to help convert them.
I once had a great conversation with somebody who kept describing America as mammonite. It was how I learned about those dumbfuck prosperity gospel types.
America worships power, and seeks to maintain wealth as the measure of power.
The founders looked up to assholes like Crassus after all.
I'm gonna be annoying and point out that ideas don't shape material reality, it's the other way around. Assigning moral value to labor follows from the development of labor exploitation, and anti-communism is capitalism's self defense against the erosion of the property relations that make it up
is the way it is maintained not peculiar to the conditions it finds itself in? capitalism is, the whole world round, justified with religious and ideological means. but the shape of those is a bit different for each religion & it's interface with nationalism, racism etc. it's how we get conflicts & competition between liberal capitalist systems
Drawing on althusser here who wrote quite a bit about the specific features of the superstructure.
The base is specifically the relations of exploitation or production. The superstructure is the sociolegal structures whose primary purpose is the reproduction of the relations of production. If for whatever reason people just decided to stop going to the factories to work to harvest and build means of production then society would be unable to function on a basic level.
The superstructure is specifically the repressive state apparatus and ideological state apparatuses. The repressive state apparatus is the legal and enforcement of the legal structures of a society, while the ideological state apparatuses are the state structures which reproduce ideology so as to maintain the relations of production - in other words reproduction of the reproduction of the relations of production.
The ISAs are the union state apparatus, the education state apparatus, the media state apparatus, the news state apparatus, the religious state apparatus etc. prior to capitalism the church played multiples of these roles at once and has now been split into only 1 of these. The ISAs main function is the reproduction of ideology, but are not exactly ideology themselves as they are definite social formations.
In other words - and what I think you are agreeing on - is that the base shapes the superstructure and the superstructure maintains the base, while simultaneously the superstructure tries to shape ideology, which is ultimately independent of the superstructure but is influenced in a very specific dialectic. Ideology can shape the superstructure in turn, as we have seen with the power of leftist movements expressed over elements of the ISAs and sometimes over the RSA, and presents a distinct force over society given the unique characteristics ideology has taken around the globe.
Ideology DOES play a role in shaping reality, but there's a distinct relationship between ideology and the superstructure and the superstructure and the base. Don't know why I typed all that out on the toilet but hope it's somewhat educational
anywhere i can research this more? it's very interesting to me
It’s partially tied to their interpretation of genesis and how it relates to land ownership. I’m tired af, so hopefully OP explains mkre.
