That's not enitirely true. The American Dream was (and is) settler-colonialism. Early settlers were promised free land if they killed indigenous peoples living there already, which led to a mostly self-sufficient labor class that could use its self-farmed land as a means to support themselves while bargaining for higher wages. If you were a white man, this dream was attainable, period, even if it meant enslaving and genociding millions of people.

Then came the post-war period. The wartime economy was still fairly planned, and aimed at full employment. Further, the US was emerging as world hegemon and de-facto empire. Imperialism and social safety nets largely expanded due to needing to provide better metrics than the Soviet Union was providing again kept the white men of the US living in the American Dream.

Now that imperialism is decaying, and social safety nets have been gutted along with the fall of the USSR as the main rival power, even white men are starting to fall into genuine proletarianization at large. The US is still a settler-colony, but its one where finance capital has dictatorial control yet imperialism is waning, and where many industries have been hollowed out and shipped overseas because imperialism was more profitable. The US is working its way to its own demise.

[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Agreed, that was the "advertised" goal, and the overall shape things took once it was set into motion. But looking at things now, in retrospect, I genuinely believe that's just what everyone was told to sell them on the idea, with the actual plan being very different for those who had access backstage, y'know?

I mean, it's much easier to motivate people to uproot their lives (regardless of how abysmal their living conditions were at the time) by promising a Land of Opportunity For Everyone, instead of telling them "yeah, we're a bunch of rich guys who want to get even richer, and we need cheap labour to get things started, then work for us, so that we may accumulate all of the wealth."

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My point is that, initially, labor-power wasn't cheap. That's why there were slaves and indentured servants, to make up for the fact that the commodity labor-power was pricier. That's what's so dangerous about settler-colonialism, it "works" for a far larger portion of society, which is why it has led to some of the most horrendous crimes of all time.

It's only now that the system is starting to genuinely unravel, but the US Empire's history as one of the most far-right and brutal countries ever is directly tied to its large settler-colonial class relations.

[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Well, yeah, it's the pyramid scheme to end all pyramid schemes, not arguing against that. But that was the Dream.

And "not cheap" as in "had a wage," as opposed to not being paid at all as a slave (although there were some costs involved with that as well, so not entirely free - I am not arguing for slavery in any way, I was just boiling down the expenditure). But wealth was clearly still pooled at the top, while most people were no better off than they are now, when talking strictly about wealth distribution ratios.

Edit: the only advantage they had was that land was "free for the taking" (if they were willing to do a little genocide beforehand), but even that ended up pooling around a handful of people once things and people settled in.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The disparity is actually skyrocketing moreso now, and steadily has been for the last century. The New Deal, as a response to the USSR, did manage to temporarily lower inequality, but corporations weren't nearly as monopolized. The status we are in today took a long time, and for hundreds of years, disparity was actually much lower than England and other countries that had started capitalism in earnest. The semi-yeoman worker in the US had bargaining power and land, which slowed down tge process of disparity.

None of this is in defense of settler-colonialism. I bring it up because it points to the class character of the US, and helps explain why it's so far-right and reactionary, as well as why leftist radicalization is increasing rapidly.

[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Yet again, I agree! But wouldn't you also agree that the system always had this in-built inequality? What I meant to say was that, while it was less immediately obvious at the start, the subsequent pooling and acceleration of said pooling were always going to happen within this system.

And that's why I suspect that this was the plan all along, because it has been visible from the start, it didn't require a retrospective if one was paying enough attention. And those who did got very, very rich.

But even if everyone would have been paying attention*, there would be no room for equality, otherwise the entire pyramid would collapse, taking everyone's "more than" with it.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 hours ago

Yes, I absolutely agree that the disparity we see today is a direct result of the former social relations. The agrarian slave-driven economy in the south was certainly going to result in conflict with the industrial economy based on wage labor in the north, especially as the north needed new wage laborers to expand industrially. Historical progression is a process of endless spirals, tendencies and trajectories accumulate over time until a quantitative buildup results in a qualitative change.

However, I don't see it as something that was intentionally planned. Capital doesn't think that way. Capitalist production is an ever-expanding circuit that must constantly be repeated, anything going against that system of voracious profit gets dashed. Long-term planning is characteristic of socialism, not capitalism, nor the semi-yeoman style of settler-colonial capitalism or slave driven agrarian economy.

This is important, because understanding how we got here today can tell us where we are headed. The historic task of the US proletariat in the age of dying imperialism is to topple the capitalist state and replace it with a socialist state, focusing on decolonization and anti-imperialism. The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. This is only increasingly possible because the US working class is becoming increasingly proletarianized due to monopolist capture of the land, and imperialism is weakening to the point where we cannot be bribed as much by its spoils.

We aren't here because of some 5-D chess from the old bourgeoisie, nor did the settlers have ignorance of the system. The US settler class was bribed using the spoils of genocide, and its only increasingly true now that there isn't really a semi-yeoman class. The immense brutality of settler-colonialism can't keep the US afloat anymore, nor can imperialism.

I'm just trying to help provide a Marxist perspective, as it genuinely gives us a chance of completing the US proletariat's historic duty. I'm a Marxist-Leninist.