I feel like I’ve read plenty about the historical materialist understanding about how the US constitution was formed and its class characteristics, but a lot less about the actual act of declaring independence. I do know how a bunch of the founding fathers made fortunes from land speculation via genocide and stealing indigenous land; and how the Brits wouldn’t let the yanks do that because they didn’t want to start another incredibly expensive war with the native peoples. I’ve also read of Gerald Horne’s thesis about how the founding fathers were worried that GB would totally outlaw slavery. I have a lot respect for Horne, he’s great but frankly I think that theory has little to no concrete evidence supporting it. But those two are the only materialist analyses of independence that I’ve seen so far.
reading veblen has made me depressed
feels like everyone just ends up ditching material conditions and mostly discount it as a secondary effect in favor of status signaling once socioeconomic conditions improve past a certain point with the end result being
someone needs to invent the field of ideological engineering
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
i think confucianism tried to mitigate this by putting merchants at the bottom of the class ladder but that is like a bandaid on gunshot wound tier of fix
just feeling doomerpilled about unseating the primacy of status relations at a societal level once you get past basic subsistence conditions
deleted by creator