https://www.businessinsider.com/what-it-takes-to-be-middle-class-middle-income-wealth-2024-5
"If we admit that we're very class-based — which we really are — that reveals the uncomfortable truth that we're not as democratic as we like to pretend to be, which is the heart and soul of this country," he said. "If we're not truly democracy, then what are we? That's the whole justification for creating this country."
Yeah, but you don’t need a democracy just because you had a revolution over taxes. It was a democracy by and for the bourgeoisie out of necessity, meant to handle internal class conflict for a class that was far from nonhierarchical, but also much more distributed than the strict pyramid structure of the monarchy. The settlers importing and enslaving a bespoke proletariat resulted in a class fluidity that made it necessary to establish governance that would accommodate that fluidity. Specifically, of the ruling class being based on capital ownership as well as race and sex.
Really well said.
Thank you. It’s mostly paraphrasing Settlers, but I think the bit about the democracy being by and for the bourgeoisie makes a lot of American mythology makes sense. At least for me, it connects the dots because the ideals Americans are taught about democracy and the source of those ideals in the self-interest of land-owning male slave owners. These were very practical considerations for material problems.
Same. I like to rationalize it as them thinking about their (class) problems in very selfish and largely un-critical ways, then conversing with other like minded individuals who share selfish (class) interests, then they write those ideas down and that becomes what is taught to all. Since they hold an overwhelming monopoly on power those ideas remain largely unchallenged as they go on to shape history. They make sense from their point of view to me, because it’s exactly their point of view, without any consideration for the possibility of my point of view. It’s the various interpretations and justifications after the fact that filter their way through the generations. It really makes the idea that we have an unchanging constitution extra terrifying.
It’s our point of view and our expectations that their words mean “liberty and freedom for all,” but their point of view meant exactly what was on the tin “liberty and freedom for all (of my class)”