6 ms·

All revolutions happen because of mass unemployment of the middle class. Not the aristocracy, working class, or decrepit poor. The middle class is the group of

All revolutions happen because of mass unemployment of the middle class. Not the aristocracy, working class, or decrepit poor. The middle class is the group of people of artisanal or union class. They are secured in either a specialized role or high paying job for a somewhat general labor role. If they lose their job en masse, finding a job becomes very hard. So now not only do they have time to kill, but they have influence in swaths. Aristocrats likely end up backing groups that begin to rise up. Which helps fan the flames of discontent. We've seen it happen France in the 1700s, Germany in the 1800s and 1900s, Russia pre WWI, China in WW2, and Spain during WW2. Imo, the US is far from this happening. The only people who often complain about radical income disparity live in one of the major cities. Granted it has merit, but there is a sizable amount of people that live outside of those HCOL areas. City people forget that there is a very wealthy, affluent, and secure America outside of cities.

Retric 6y ago
Slave revolts have been common throughout history, and while largely unsuccessful they disagree with your assessment. Revolutions start at every level of society from the aristocracy, poor, military, or intellectuals. What sustains revolutions behind the initial conflict is often propaganda.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > Slave revolts have been common throughout history, and while largely unsuccessful they disagree with your assessment. Here is a complete list of all historically attested successful slave revolts: Haiti, 1791 That’s it. Revolutions require leadership. Overwhelming that’s going to be the educated or otherwise reasonably comfortable, or those who were recently so and want it back. Peasant revolts fail without leaders, who are either going to be nobles or bourgeois. Those who can’t organize can’t win and a bureaucracy requires literate men, who are very unlikely to be poor. Revolutions win. Slave revolts not so much.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Slaves actually called slaves where relatively uncommon in history. Include peasant uprisings and several more become relevant. However, the important bit for US isn’t the long term results it’s the chaos involved in these civil wars. The Third Servile War for example grew from 70 slave-gladiators to ~120,000 men in 2 years and won several significant battles vs the Roman Army. You really don’t want to see the modern version of that kind of fighting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      > Slaves actually called slaves where relatively uncommon in history. I really don’t think this is true. Human property varied in how common it was but the institution existed in every agricultural society I’m aware of up until at least three 1600s when serfdom died out in England. That’s probably the first society in which humans were not held as property. Western Europe was also likely the first agricultural society not to have chattel slavery but I’m less confident. Certainly slavery was practiced in the Moslem world into the 1900s and well attested all over Asia and in most of Africa and the Americas.
      - Retric 6y ago
        when serfdom died out in England You’re equating serfdom with slavery when my point is separating slavery by name excludes such classes. India and China for example where very stratified societies, but slavery was effectively a separate and less common institution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India Anyway, by relatively uncommon I mean compared to the US concept of slavery where they made up a huge chunk of the southern workforce and could be sold between individuals.
    - Alenycus 6y ago
      The third servile war was hardly successful. They all ended up literally crucified.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  I'll wait for your list of slave revolts that actually cause a revolution in the ruling class. I know it won't take you long. Revolutions need leaders, like the other person who commented. There isn't enough wealth aristocrats that can lead, so they stem from the middle class. The middle class tend to have lower class friends. They can very easily sway them to their cause. Now multiply that by tens of millions of middle class that suddenly became unemployed. Unemployed artists can make propaganda, programmers can make websites and portray this information at the forefront everywhere (think the whole black lives matter flags everywhere), business people assemble and manage large groups of people, scientists devote their time to studies on working class struggles and less on scientific endeavors, etc. The lower class can't do any of that stuff. They don't know how and never had the time to figure out. This is the very reason why Hitler rose to power through the NSDAP. He did this stuff and appealed to the right aristocrats. The NSDAP grew and unemployed middle class members peacefully revolted by joining them because they wanted their old pre-WWI lives back. They hated hyperinflation owed due to the Treaty of Versaille basically imposed on their government an impossible to pay burden which cause currency debasement galore in order to pay it back. This in turn create hyperinflation that essentially decimated the working class. The money they had no longer could buy the things they wanted. Now they have nothing but an education and time.
vkou 6y ago
I would be hard pressed to describe rural America as affluent, wealthy, or secure. It's being ravaged by a drug crisis, underemployment, and much of it is at truly shocking levels of poverty for a first world nation. What I can describe it as, is helpless. Instead of seizing it's political power to improve their lot, most of the people at the bottom of it are either apathetic to politics, or are politically distracted by a culture war.
- codyb 6y ago
  That sounds like certain rural areas. I think GP was trying to talk about small town to small city America and their suburbs of which there are some reasonable middle class lifestyles going on. In regards to your second paragraph, power in America is heavily concentrated towards rural Americans in sparsely populated states, especially at the national level, because of institutions such as the Senate and the electoral college making it rather difficult to get large legislation passed. I wouldn’t call it helpless, there’s been a fair amount of political energy in America since its beginning.
  - eropple 6y ago
    Those small towns and small cities--more the small towns than the small cities, but often those too--have those "reasonable middle class lifestyles" largely due to wealth transfers from bigger economic centers. As a large city dweller for my entire adult life that does not bother me, but it isn't a sustainable process without those economic engines external to them.
    - mythrwy 6y ago
      I'm not sure that's entirely true. What wealth exactly is exported from urban centers to small towns and rural communities? Tax revenue? Ya likely that. Otherwise I'd argue the reverse. Banking, media, software etc. seem to export wealth from smaller communities back to urban centers. In this regard large urban centers can be regarded something as absentee landlords receiving grapes and oil and Amish furniture and exporting spreadsheets and compliance audits.
user5994461 6y ago
Correction: The revolution happened due to starvation. Employment and salaries are recent concepts, they have no relevance. A few hundreds years ago the largest single concern by far was to have food on the table. There was no functional markets and no long distance transportation, you couldn't buy food if there was a bad harvest or calamity, there was no food to sale and/or the price doubled overnight.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  In a way you can consider that a "salary." Whether it's an edible currency or not is irrelevant.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  Starvation might have been a factor in determining the course of the revolution, and might have helped it gain momentum, but I don't think it's right to say that the revolution happened "due to starvation". The triggering event was the declaration of bankruptcy of the French state, and apart from poverty and starvation, there were a lot of other factors that also helped move revolutionary ideas along.
PrinceKropotkin 6y ago
What do you think the middle class is not a part of the working class?

Retric 6y ago

Slave revolts have been common throughout history, and while largely unsuccessful they disagree with your assessment. Revolutions start at every level of society from the aristocracy, poor, military, or intellectuals. What sustains revolutions behind the initial conflict is often propaganda.

barry-cotter 6y ago
> Slave revolts have been common throughout history, and while largely unsuccessful they disagree with your assessment. Here is a complete list of all historically attested successful slave revolts: Haiti, 1791 That’s it. Revolutions require leadership. Overwhelming that’s going to be the educated or otherwise reasonably comfortable, or those who were recently so and want it back. Peasant revolts fail without leaders, who are either going to be nobles or bourgeois. Those who can’t organize can’t win and a bureaucracy requires literate men, who are very unlikely to be poor. Revolutions win. Slave revolts not so much.
- Retric 6y ago
  Slaves actually called slaves where relatively uncommon in history. Include peasant uprisings and several more become relevant. However, the important bit for US isn’t the long term results it’s the chaos involved in these civil wars. The Third Servile War for example grew from 70 slave-gladiators to ~120,000 men in 2 years and won several significant battles vs the Roman Army. You really don’t want to see the modern version of that kind of fighting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    > Slaves actually called slaves where relatively uncommon in history. I really don’t think this is true. Human property varied in how common it was but the institution existed in every agricultural society I’m aware of up until at least three 1600s when serfdom died out in England. That’s probably the first society in which humans were not held as property. Western Europe was also likely the first agricultural society not to have chattel slavery but I’m less confident. Certainly slavery was practiced in the Moslem world into the 1900s and well attested all over Asia and in most of Africa and the Americas.
    - Retric 6y ago
      when serfdom died out in England You’re equating serfdom with slavery when my point is separating slavery by name excludes such classes. India and China for example where very stratified societies, but slavery was effectively a separate and less common institution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India Anyway, by relatively uncommon I mean compared to the US concept of slavery where they made up a huge chunk of the southern workforce and could be sold between individuals.
  - Alenycus 6y ago
    The third servile war was hardly successful. They all ended up literally crucified.
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
I'll wait for your list of slave revolts that actually cause a revolution in the ruling class. I know it won't take you long. Revolutions need leaders, like the other person who commented. There isn't enough wealth aristocrats that can lead, so they stem from the middle class. The middle class tend to have lower class friends. They can very easily sway them to their cause. Now multiply that by tens of millions of middle class that suddenly became unemployed. Unemployed artists can make propaganda, programmers can make websites and portray this information at the forefront everywhere (think the whole black lives matter flags everywhere), business people assemble and manage large groups of people, scientists devote their time to studies on working class struggles and less on scientific endeavors, etc. The lower class can't do any of that stuff. They don't know how and never had the time to figure out. This is the very reason why Hitler rose to power through the NSDAP. He did this stuff and appealed to the right aristocrats. The NSDAP grew and unemployed middle class members peacefully revolted by joining them because they wanted their old pre-WWI lives back. They hated hyperinflation owed due to the Treaty of Versaille basically imposed on their government an impossible to pay burden which cause currency debasement galore in order to pay it back. This in turn create hyperinflation that essentially decimated the working class. The money they had no longer could buy the things they wanted. Now they have nothing but an education and time.

vkou 6y ago

I would be hard pressed to describe rural America as affluent, wealthy, or secure. It's being ravaged by a drug crisis, underemployment, and much of it is at truly shocking levels of poverty for a first world nation. What I can describe it as, is helpless. Instead of seizing it's political power to improve their lot, most of the people at the bottom of it are either apathetic to politics, or are politically distracted by a culture war.

codyb 6y ago
That sounds like certain rural areas. I think GP was trying to talk about small town to small city America and their suburbs of which there are some reasonable middle class lifestyles going on. In regards to your second paragraph, power in America is heavily concentrated towards rural Americans in sparsely populated states, especially at the national level, because of institutions such as the Senate and the electoral college making it rather difficult to get large legislation passed. I wouldn’t call it helpless, there’s been a fair amount of political energy in America since its beginning.
- eropple 6y ago
  Those small towns and small cities--more the small towns than the small cities, but often those too--have those "reasonable middle class lifestyles" largely due to wealth transfers from bigger economic centers. As a large city dweller for my entire adult life that does not bother me, but it isn't a sustainable process without those economic engines external to them.
  - mythrwy 6y ago
    I'm not sure that's entirely true. What wealth exactly is exported from urban centers to small towns and rural communities? Tax revenue? Ya likely that. Otherwise I'd argue the reverse. Banking, media, software etc. seem to export wealth from smaller communities back to urban centers. In this regard large urban centers can be regarded something as absentee landlords receiving grapes and oil and Amish furniture and exporting spreadsheets and compliance audits.

user5994461 6y ago

Correction: The revolution happened due to starvation. Employment and salaries are recent concepts, they have no relevance. A few hundreds years ago the largest single concern by far was to have food on the table. There was no functional markets and no long distance transportation, you couldn't buy food if there was a bad harvest or calamity, there was no food to sale and/or the price doubled overnight.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
In a way you can consider that a "salary." Whether it's an edible currency or not is irrelevant.
Tainnor 6y ago
Starvation might have been a factor in determining the course of the revolution, and might have helped it gain momentum, but I don't think it's right to say that the revolution happened "due to starvation". The triggering event was the declaration of bankruptcy of the French state, and apart from poverty and starvation, there were a lot of other factors that also helped move revolutionary ideas along.

PrinceKropotkin 6y ago

What do you think the middle class is not a part of the working class?