Excerpt from Friedrich Engels's 6th of January 1892 letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge:
There is no place yet in America for a third party, I believe. The divergence of interests even in the same class group is so great in that tremendous area that wholly different groups and interests are represented in each of the two big parties, depending on the locality, and almost each particular section of the possessing class has its representatives in each of the two parties to a very large degree, though today big industry forms the core of the Republicans on the whole, just as the big landowners of the South form that of the Democrats. The apparent haphazardness of this jumbling together is what provides the splendid soil for the corruption and the plundering of the government that flourish there so beautifully. Only when the land — the public lands — is completely in the hands of the speculators, and settlement on the land thus becomes more and more difficult or falls prey to gouging — only then, I think, will the time come, with peaceful development, for a third party. Land is the basis of speculation, and the American speculative mania and speculative opportunity are the chief levers that hold the native-born worker in bondage to the bourgeoisie. Only when there is a generation of native-born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more will we have a solid foothold in America. But, of course, who can count on peaceful development in America! There are economic jumps over there, like the political ones in France — to be sure, they produce the same momentary retrogressions.
The small farmer and the petty bourgeois will hardly ever succeed in forming a strong party; they consist of elements that change too rapidly — the farmer is often a migratory farmer, farming two, three, and four farms in succession in different states and territories, immigration and bankruptcy promote the change in personnel, and economic dependence upon the creditor also hampers independence — but to make up for it they are a splendid element for politicians, who speculate on their discontent in order to sell them out to one of the big parties afterward.
The tenacity of the Yankees, who are even rehashing the Greenback humbug, is a result of their theoretical backwardness and their Anglo-Saxon contempt for all theory. They are punished for this by a superstitious belief in every philosophical and economic absurdity, by religious sectarianism, and by idiotic economic experiments, out of which, however, certain bourgeois cliques profit.
The tenacity of the Yankees, who are even rehashing the Greenback humbug, is a result of their theoretical backwardness and their Anglo-Saxon contempt for all theory.
lmfao got em
:animengels: :amerikkka::animarx:
They are punished for this by a superstitious belief in every philosophical and economic absurdity, by religious sectarianism, and by idiotic economic experiments, out of which, however, certain bourgeois cliques profit.
Literally nothing has changed in 200 years.
idiotic economic experiments, out of which, however, certain bourgeois cliques profit.
They literally predicted crypto and NFTs. They just don’t miss
The more things change the more they stay the same. Victorian grifts were wild and killed people.
I was learning about the history of electricity, and stumbled in this thing called the flying/dangling boy
This predates Victorian England but it’s… enlightening
In his sixties and living as a pensioner in Charterhouse, a home for destitute gentlemen, Gray returned to his electrical studies.
[…]
Charterhouse, the home for impoverished gentlemen, had a school. This was convenient. Gray created an electrical demonstration that became famous across Europe and the new world. It involved dangling a small boy on silk strings and connecting him to an electrical generator. Charterhouse school provided the (presumably willing) volunteers.
This description leaves much to the imagination
Never thought I'd get the definitive word on DeFi from Engels. A world-historical poster.
religious sectarianism is such a great term for those :reddit-logo: tier atheists who are still fully Christian in a cultural and philosophical manner, except for issues like LGBT rights and abortion. And even then, many of them backslide and become chuds and chud religious again.I'm dumb and can't read pls ignore, confused religious sectarianism with religious secularism
I am so proud of Pittsburgh for fucking destroying the Workingmen's Party for instantly joining the Greenbacks. I assume that is what he is talking about, the "socialists" who had been in the US for a few generations sold out the org in its first election by specifically not including German and Czech language versions of their plans to go to the Greenback convention. They used the language barrier to betray their majority, German and Bohemian immigrants in Pittsburgh and Hoboken who could hardly speak and could not read English.
So the Pittsburgh German immigrants who had just done the railstrike burned the party down led by Otto Weydemeyer son of Joseph who was a Prussian civil war Union officer, communist '48er, and personal friend and english translator of Marx and Engels. Otto actually translated several of both Marx and Engels' works into english for the first time.
A letter by a German Allegheny City laborer and Communist C. Saam
Those workmen who still hold aloof, to you I say, combine; join our ranks and help us to wage war for the emancipation of humanity, read the socialist journals which represent your interests and those of the whole human race. Reflect upon your own condition, break loose from the existing parties, whether Republican, Democratic or Greenback, all of which are exclusive- ly bent on their own interest. Beware of so-called workmen’s friends, who join our ranks with an eye to office. Until we can produce men out of our own ranks, fit to hold office, let us hold aloof from politics. But let us labor in the meantime for the organization and emancipation of the working classes, doing all we can to induce the workmen to combine [into trade unions], whereby, in my judgment, we shall do more to promote our interests than by interfering in politics before our strength is fully developed, as, for instance, in the case with our English- speaking fellow members in Allegheny Co[unty]. We Germans know full well, first that we were not strong enough to take a hand in the coming autumn elections, second having no members whom we could elect to these offices, third knowing that our election would be of no use. Those members of our organization who brought about this combination have grossly violated the fundamental principles of our constitution, or else they would not have displayed such unbounded ignorance. Let us not be precipitate-let us bide our time-it will come soon
His words are fucking indistinguishable from the prescription for today, save for literally just Allegheny City being part of Pittsburgh now. that's IT
did you read Phillip Foner's histories of US labor? I've been meaning to read them and this seems like the kind of stuff you would learn from reading those histories.
I would hope so cause this is one of Foner's books. :che-smile:
https://archive.org/details/HistoryWorkingmensPartyUS/page/n17/mode/2up?q=pittsburgh
pretty crazy how communist thinkers had the US figured out 130 years ago and yet contemporary liberal "experts" still aren't sure
reminds me of this aimixin comment
It is so frustrating to argue with libs who make arguments so old that literally Marx himself responded to them. I get the impression that Marxists already won the debate back in the 19th century and the liberal tactic has just been to pretend the debate has never happened, to continue repeating centuries-old arguments over and over again as if they've never been responded to, and to discourage anyone from looking into Marxism or reading Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc.
Any time I see that username on :reddit-logo: I know it's gonna be good
Being a liberal expert is telling your readers that no one knows anything then being surprised when they discover the facts that just happened to be written about a century ago by two bearded boys
Being liberal means there are only two genders: Bad folx and good folx
“ and by idiotic economic experiments, out of which, however, certain bourgeois cliques profit.”
This reminded me of Crypto
I spent a little too much time lurking in the gamestop stock subreddit as well as wallstreetbets, and i totally agree.
There's a joke that success (in speculation) is the only thing keeping them away from "working at Wendy's" (a stand in for any kind of low-wage work)
Without the belief in financial success they might have to think of themselves as workers
I think the impressive part is that it still fucking works like that for farming. It is still all speculation and creditor nonsense.
Is rentseeking considered to be an aspect of speculation? Cuz that is also an element in play in farming.
Eh, kinda. It more has to do with the fact that the states have been pretty good at keeping ahold of public land for the last 50 years, but there has been an escalation of sell offs as a result of the consequences of reduced DNR funding. Basically, the cycle is, state Republicans reduce DNR funding, which causes formerly well taken care of public lands to turn to shit, which causes the local community to petition the state to sell, which is then bought up by private individuals, who then eventually sell to large farming conglomerates. Rinse and repeat. Idk how long it will take to sell all that land though, there is still alot of it left in the U.S.
Yeah, alright, it's another form of buying an asset with the expectation of selling it back later to the same market. Thank you for the food for thought.
I’m not great at reading and analyzing theory tbh, tell me if my interpretation is correct:
Basically, since the working class is being completely shut out of owning land/housing, then socialism will take hold?
There’s a reason why most revolutions didn’t happen when most of the population believed they can “make it” out of poverty within the system
Basically. But if you want to go a step further it’s basically saying that people will only accept socialism when they are shut out of basically any illusion of ownership and progress. Shit like 401ks and Robinhood are letting poor people a taste of what financial capitalism is. If those things are threatened then there’s nothing left to have hope in.
Don't forget crypto. If you think cishet white men are angry now, wait until crypto officially goes tits up.
Basically what we're seeing now: renting increases as more and more property enters the hands of large businesses competing over scraps of already used/surveyed land. In Engels time, the US economy was fueled first by land speculation on absolutely massive tracts of "unimproved" indigenous lands, and then by management of farms and mines in former Spanish colonies. Without land or assets to speculate on, the US kind of loses everything its economy and law is built to do and things break down. Ex: pulling out of Afghanistan + losing markets to China/Russia collapsing the economy.
Musk and Bezos might try to use space property as a release valve but it'll be a few decades too late.
It’s essentially Matt Christman’s free real estate premise he keeps going on about. The USA was able to vent all of its negative consequences out westward, the endless “free” land expropriated from natives allowed the US to suppress its contradictions as long as it kept expanding. Once it hit the coast, it continued to expand into the Pacific, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Then the Great Depression, all of the building contradictions burst at once and America had nowhere else to expand. It began to implode. The capitalist powers of Europe imploded a bit earlier during WW1 because their empires had reached their expansionary limits as well, they responded by having a bit of cannibalism and interimperialist war which destroyed enough fixed capital to reset the rate of profit a bit and create new opportunities for investment.
WW2 destroyed even more fixed capital, and the US manufacturing was unharmed due to geographic isolation. It was able to leverage its relative manufacturing power to create a new neo-colonial global system where American capital and markets extended to almost everywhere on Earth.
It spend the next few decades trying to expand to the last few holdouts (Vietnam, Korea, China, USSR, the Arab world, Iran) with mixed success. These small victories kept America and its globalized capital system going a bit longer.
Now we have reached a point again where there’s nowhere left to expand that isn’t a heavily entrenched fortress nation. The crisis are mounting again. We will have another Great Depression and there will be attempts at starting another world war to destroy fixed capital again.
Read Blood of Guatemala and Empire's Workshop and tell me if that matters
The Hell of Presidents mini podcast thing he did with Chris Wade was pretty entertaining and talks about this idea a lot
I wonder if all of the crypto and NFT people are completely aware of how inane and doomed their schemes are, and if the whole thing is not just some society-wide cope from people who don't have anything else to speculate on.
The tenacity of the Yankees, who are even rehashing the Greenback humbug, is a result of their theoretical backwardness
Was Engels a gold-bug?
More likely talking about the party of "populist" capitalists
Per a letter to Labor Standard
Those workmen who still hold aloof, to you I say, combine; join our ranks and help us to wage war for the emancipation of humanity, read the socialist journals which represent your interests and those of the whole human race. Reflect upon your own condition, break loose from the existing parties, whether Republican, Democratic or Greenback, all of which are exclusive- ly bent on their own interest. Beware of so-called workmen’s friends, who join our ranks with an eye to office. Until we can produce men out of our own ranks, fit to hold office, let us hold aloof from politics. But let us labor in the meantime for the organization and emancipation of the working classes, doing all we can to induce the workmen to combine [into trade unions], whereby, in my judgment, we shall do more to promote our interests than by interfering in politics before our strength is fully developed, as, for instance, in the case with our English- speaking fellow members in Allegheny Co[unty]. We Germans know full well, first that we were not strong enough to take a hand in the coming autumn elections, second having no members whom we could elect to these offices, third knowing that our election would be of no use. Those members of our organization who brought about this combination have grossly violated the fundamental principles of our constitution, or else they would not have displayed such unbounded ignorance. Let us not be precipitate-let us bide our time-it will come soon
https://archive.org/details/HistoryWorkingmensPartyUS/page/n17/mode/2up?q=pittsburgh great history in that book
