Capitalism defenders think that every capitalist state should have a standard of living like the west and those that don't are just doing capitalism wrong. The idea that the suffering of the Bangladeshi clothes factory worker and the Guatemalan banana plantation farmer and the Congolese cobalt miner are necessary for capitalism doesn't cross their minds.
Or, they think what Bangladesh et al are experiencing is their “bad” phase of capitalism, and eventually living conditions will rise and all the suffering will be worth it. “The US/UK had to go through that phase, but so does every capitalist economy. Eventually you get to where we are now”. They say something similar about the former USSR - the socialist economy was so warped that they had to go through the horror of the 90s in order to reap all the wonderful benefits of capitalism.
They ignore the fact that the British working class had to fight for some of those improvements. But really, it was when British imperialism got supercharged in the late 19th c. that things actually did get better for the English working class.
At best, they're blind to it. Their education never really got into how awful it was to be a worker in the industrial revolution. Or they think it was all exaggerated for books.
At worst, they're entirely aware of it, but insist it was a better quality of life than what working-class people had before the industrial revolution, thereby justifying the horrifying conditions.
edit: same thing if you talk about labor conditions in the global south tbh
As someone that went to public school in New York before national standardized testing changed the curriculum, I remember being taught in middle school history class the following:
- the industrial revolution was a time of great innovation
- it allowed for people to move outside of the city and commute to work
- pollution was rampant
- child labor happened all the time
- there were almost no safety regulations
- there were many many monopolies and that caused a lot of issues
- workers have collective bargaining power and unions fought to correct a lot of these issues.
The catch is, it’s usually presented as “well that was in the past, capitalism is perfectly fine now”. It’s like when libs who are actually familiar with Marx agree with what he says about capitalism, but then say the analysis is no longer relevant since we made capitalism a lot better since then. Or highlighting racism in the past but implying that racism stopped being a problem after 1965, when racism was defeated legislatively (hooray for liberalism!)
I don't think most people have a very good grip on history.
I feel like for the average American, history goes
- dark ages
- "Columbus discovered America"
- us revolution
- us civil war
- WW2
- 1950s
- 9/11
- today
Given that level of knowledge, I wouldn't expect much nuance or even accuracy from people.
On the other hand, I just made this up. I bet there's polls and stuff that tell us how much people actually know, but I bet those are super depressing.
good life is when technological gizmos
bad life is when
peasantagriculturevaguely ruralno, they don't forget, they just pretend that it's completely natural.
they insist that private property is natural, and so the proletariat is natural, as if people are born into a state of abject poverty rather than poverty being imposed upon them.
forgetting that before enclosure most people had a right to access and use productive land for subsistence.
As someone that has been learning how to grow food, I find the idea of common land very interesting. However I do wonder how farmers that were using common land would update agriculture practices.
Like let's say someone wanted to dig swales and direct water into a pond so more diverse plants could be grown on some land, would there need to be a big debate about it? If so then with who? If the land is not owned then who forms a consensus about it's use. If the users of the land are the ones that help make those decisions, wouldn't they naturally form some type of farm user association to schedule and hold these debates? Would at some point it become harder for new land users to change land use practices after such an association is established with seniority?
Are there any books on there s subject for someone like me to read?
In midieval times there was a LOT of meetings, contracts etc between essentially city council members to settle very similar issues in regards to use of the commons.
capitalism is when I drive a 3-ton pickup truck to my business casual attire office job where I cold-call people to sell penis enlarger cream that doesn't work and I eat mcdodnal and drink budlite
They basically view the Industrial Revolution as their own "transitory period". Things sucked while capitalism was getting its footing but once it was established it was all burgers and Xboxes for all!
Ignores the west largely just exported all the nasty parts of industrialism via colonialism to get out of that phase.
Hey now, there's one exception. In the US and now the UK, the population there masochistically demands to bear the brunt of said nasty parts of industrialism to prove how tough they are.
They don't give the first fuck because they fantasize about being the guy feeding workers to the horrific machines of the industrial revolution. They never think about being the guy getting dragged into the sausage maker.
CHUDs like to forget about the protracted people's war waged by Sascha Konietzko and Trent Reznor against the hair metal bourgeoisie. So many mesh lycra onesies met their demise in the pits.
they didn't pay attention in school that day, if it was talked about at all
