Looking for a succinct primer for those politically disengaged folks who are tuning out because "both sides have gotten so mean". Obviously the contradictions are heightening but how do you ease in a materialist perspective when someone is already so exhausted by "bias"
Capitalism polarizes people into classes, capitalism ain’t what it used to be because of the tendency for profit to decline (to make more money you need better machines, but these also cost money, which ultimately decreases your profits), plus the world is uniting against amerikkka and proving that like feudalism and slavery and primitive communism, capitalism is a temporary thing, but as capitalism declines labor aristocrats (mostly democrats) and the bourgeoisie (mostly republicans) need to blame something other than the system (since the system used to benefit them more and in fact created them), so they scapegoat each other as well as minorities. Thus, polarization!
don't know about this one
Yeah that's not a useful divide at all and the reverse is often true depending on where you live. Where I live the wealthiest types are more likely to be democrats. The only real class distinction that denotes if one is a democrat or republican is among the bourgeoisie. Industries like oil, construction, energy, weapons, have a lot of republican business owners. Industries like international finance, advertising, media, etc have more democrats.
Working class people associate with either party in idiosyncratic ways, but largely geographically, sometimes by age, and sometimes by education level. Most people don't seem to give a shit and form affiliations based on stuff they've heard from their parents.
It’s more like:
Dems: Labor aristocrats, international/financial bourgeoisie, proles stuck within Liberal ideology, managerial class, “creatives”, academics
Republics: Industrial/National bourgeoise, Petty bourgeoisie, alienated proles with confused reactionary ideologies, lumpens, self-employed “entrepreneurs” and the heavily religious
The system always has to artificially divide up proles against each other to survive, but the increasing polarization is happening due to a widening rift between the interests of the international/finance bourgies and the national/industrial bourgies, this rift is filtered down through proxy issues that the lower groups care about: LGBT rights, abortion, police brutality. The upper haute bourgies don’t actually care about any of these issues, but they cynically know their underlings do and use them to try and gain political and economic dominance against their bourgie rivals (they actually care more about imperialism, protectionism/free trade, taxes)
Democrats are more international bourgeoisie and intelligensia(although the latter is in both groups) Republicans are more national bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie
In my experience, it's labor aristocrats (Democrats) vs small business owners (Republicans).