they shaped their culture around anticommunism. you bet they will keep alienating their people further, and will hold off a revolution for as long as possible.
The reason there isn't a revolution in the USA is mostly down to atomization. Suburban growth directly leads to insular communities with no sense of responsibility to the rest of their brothers and sisters. Working class families in the burbs have functionally 0 ability to organize.
To add that on, I like to underscore the gravity of the situation here with details:
- The top 10% of earners starts at ~170k/yr
- The top 1% start at ~820k/yr
- The top 0.1% start at ~3,300k/yr (3.3 million)
- If Elon Musk had 100% of his net worth in really basic bonds giving 5%/yr he'd be pulling in 22 BILLION dollars per year, forever.
The interest on his earnings alone is equivalent to 130,000 workers at the start of the top 10%. That's the entire workforce of American Airlines for comparison.
If the average person was paid like the 0.1% for 1 year they could retire and live off 65k/yr forever.
This chart is broken down by quintiles but it illustrates the disparity well imo.
Half of the wealth of the top 20% here (excluding top 1%) is in businesses or real estate they own. Most of that will be their own house and a small business, though
leeches"landlords" mostly fall in this category too.For the top 1% that's more like 20% of their net worth.
Show
No dude you mixed some numbers up - 5%/yr of 440 billion is 22 BILLION dollars per year.
Unless you meant he could put 0.1% of his wealth (440 mil) to pull 22 million a year.
In fact, he could put less than half of his total net worth, 200 bil, into a basic savings account returning 0.5% a year and live off of a billion dollars a year, which is equivalent to the median income of 16,666 others.
While you were writing this comment I was updating my original comment because I messed up! Correct: 22 BILLION.
Market 10 year average is 11%. 400B at 11% for 30 years left of his life. That's not 1 trillion dollars, not 2... Not 3... It's over 9 trillion.
His money if allowed to be passed down and kept in the market, would make more than 1T dollars a year at that point.
Yeah but his net worth is tied mostly in specific stocks.
And beyond that broad market withdrawal rates mean you can really only safely pull about 4% without eating into the nest egg.
But yeah it's all true - he's on track to a trillion before he dies.
He doesn't really need to sell though does he. Like imagine if ceo's came out to trade and give public announcements beforehand to build trust. For instance an Apple Executive trading directly with Musk equal valued shares and telling the populous it is a good thing as these executives are showing that they believe strongly in these other companies. Next thing you know he's got his investments varied across every field, and should maintain a portfolio matching the market average whether one field struggles for a bit or not. It "looks" like they are all showing faith in each other's future gains, but in reality is is diversifying their portfolio to ensure no large setbacks
Neighborhood politics, social gatherings, community hotspots has massively declined in the last two generations,
It’s really hard to organize anything face to face?
It is and while I don't think that was Eisenhower's 5d chess play it is more or less directly from cold war era policies that encouraged Americans to live anywhere besides a city.
yes but have you considered that in nk they have no food and push the trains? (source: CIA) instead of all this radical talk i think we should VOTE harder, especially for progressive like bernie and aoc
There are significant barriers in place for revolution in the US. The Proletariat is still under the belief that supporting US Imperialism will benefit themselves more than Socialism. Additionally, theory is frequently coopted by Trots and other impractical forms, resulting in people endlessly seeking to critique society, not change it (your Noam Chomskys and the like). Moreover, labor organization has been millitantly crushed.
I recommend starting with theory. I have an introductory Marxist reading list if you want a place to start.
For elaboration on Chomsky, I recommend reading On Chomsky.
i saw someone else try to share a similar message on tiktok yesterday and the overwhelming majority of the american users referred theory as little more than "book clubs for intellectuals" despite the chinese & latin american users trying to defend its usefulness on the same post.
getting my feet wet with this reading list is making it clear to me that i'm still a heavily propagandized american liberal and some of the tiktokers who called it a book club had seemingly more knowledge of theory that I did, so i wasn't qualified to speak up. what would your response be to such a criticism?
People who denounce theory denounce revolution. It's plain and simple. Back in pre-revolutionary Russia, the SRs declared "an end to theory" as a unifying factor to be celebrated, and declared assassinations "transfer power." This is, of course, ridiculous, theory is important because it is useful despite disagreements over it, and assassinations do not "transfer power," but create a void filled by those closest to it, always bourgeois, never proletarian. The Bolsheviks ended up being correct, that theory, discipline, and organization is what brings real revolution, and the SRs have mostly been forgotten. I recommend reading Revolutionary Adventurism.
It's important to recognize that Westerners have an implicit desire to maintain the status quo, having been taught all our lives that we have the "best possible" system yet. The western leftist idea of "no true Marxism yet" fits conveniently with that narrative, it's deeply chauvanistic and moreover anti-revolutionary. Looking at the most popular trends of Marxism in the west, we see many Trots and "orthodox" Marxists, some of the least successful in producing real revolution globally, while in the Global South Marxism-Leninism is dominant.
The "book club" Marxists are equally dangerous as the "adventurist" Marxists (or Anarchists, if you prefer). It is only through uniting theory with practice that we will succeed. You cannot be anti-theory and you cannot be anti-practice, you must unite both. I want to commend your discipline in not speaking up, one of the guiding principles of Marxists is "no investigation, no right to speak." Muddying the waters with low quality input is pollutant, asking good questions and practicing self-restraint when speaking on what you don't know clarifies the waters of discourse.
I highly recommend reading Masses, Elites, and Rebels: the Theory of "Brainwashing."
To add on to what else has been said, you can just be blunt and obnoxious about it. Tell them "If a bunch of barely literate peasants in China can figure out Kapital on their own despite it being written in another language, you can read a pamphlet or two."
People smarter than anyone alive have done more in worse conditions and did us the courtesy of writing down what worked and what didn't. The Bolsheviks, Black Panther Party, anarchists in Civil War Spain and Nazi Germany, etc. were in life or death situations trying to mobilize leftwing revolution. The least anyone calling themselves a socialist can do is read what they wrote. If you say "I don't need to read theory because it's just a book club," you're being an arrogant, egotistical asshole.
We also live in an age where there are audiobooks and videos that will read this stuff to you for free, something our predecessors didn't have. People with disabilities have used these tools to help them understand theory when they struggle with reading. There's really no excuse.
- Show
Wasn't it socialist China that brought those numbers up?
Looking at wealth distribution on a country-by-country basis is a mistake.
Take that US wealth distribution graph and then graph it with the rest of the world; the reason there's no revolution becomes obvious.
The "wealth distribution" theory of unrest is so thoroughly debunked its insane to see people who still think in these terms. Smh.
The revolution was about missed meals and lack of food. The US isn’t there yet.
This is overall distribution by percentage, so aggregate total represented wouldn’t have an impact. If it were to have an impact, I think we’d have hoped it would mean the slope was more even.
This is overall distribution by percentage, so aggregate total
what I mean is that if total land area is 1 acre, and 80% of people own 1% of the land, they're starving
if total land area is 5000 acres, and 80% of people (same population size) own 1% of the land, then everyone is well fed on the same inequality
I mean...there was an attempt. The chronically online seem to think a revolution in the USA would be socialist, but these are Americans we're talking about. Its either be back to 1800s style libertarian ethics or fascism, corporatism, something like that, decimating government power not increasing it.
can't say I'm a huge fan of Nick Cruse or the rest of RBN, but a graph's a graph I guess
