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But that growth period also came after the largest Marxist redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor that's ever happened in America.

by Hasu 2y ago

ty6853 2y ago
The mythos often presented is mass wealth inequality is incompatible with raising of living standards of the poor. The poor can gain something at least temporarily by taking it from the rich. Another less violent option is mutually beneficial voluntary interactions.
- Hasu 2y ago
  I'm talking about Emancipation. So no, this isn't temporarily taking something from the rich, or something that could have been solved through "mutually beneficial voluntary action". The government told a bunch of rich people that the incredibly valuable people they owned were no longer their property, and gave money and land to the people who previously had nothing because they hadn't been considered people. That's what kicked off your Gilded Age
  - ty6853 2y ago
    You're literally talking about moving violence enforced slavery to something closer to voluntary trade of labor. That's far from exclusively Marxian, even most brands of ancapism advocate such philosophy.
    - Hasu 2y ago
      Yes, it's also a wealth transfer, and slaveholders (other than in DC) were not compensated. If you're ignoring that huge economic event in your analysis of the economics of the latter half of the 19th century, trying to replicate it today is going to be very rough. Given your other replies in this thread, you're not interested in arguing honestly and I'm not going to continue engaging.
      - ty6853 2y ago
        The involuntary wealth transfer of slavery was from slaves to the rich, not the other way around. Framing it as the slaves taking from the rich when they stopped being slaves by no longer providing free labor is monumentally disingenuous, and I don't think you really believe that.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > I'm talking about Emancipation Emancipation isn't Marxist, historically or conceptually. > That's what kicked off your Gilded Age Absolutely not. "Railroads were the major growth industry," with industrialisation and immigration being the era's economic drivers [1]. "The South remained economically devastated after the American Civil War" and remained a drag on the American economy throughout most of the Gilded Age. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    You’re out of your mind and blathering out of ignorance. Nothing about that era resembles Marxism, and I’d guess you’d struggle to tell the difference between Karl Marx and the Marx Brothers. Reconstruction was shut down. Slaves went from assets to contract services. Jim Crow ensured that there was no movement upward. For the aristocracy, they were hurt by the depredation of war but recovered stronger than before under the new system. The gilded age was about railroads. The south with their feudalist system was a backwater producing mostly raw material. They moved out of irrelevance because social control allowed them to control the Senate for decades.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Only in the South, and shortlived. The elite quickly regained control of both the land and means of production. It also had nothing to do with Marxism. There was no redistribution of land as in social revolutions in other countries (France, Russia, China).

But that growth period also came after the largest Marxist redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor that's ever happened in America.

by Hasu 2y ago

But that growth period also came after the largest Marxist redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor that's ever happened in America.

ty6853 2y ago

The mythos often presented is mass wealth inequality is incompatible with raising of living standards of the poor. The poor can gain something at least temporarily by taking it from the rich. Another less violent option is mutually beneficial voluntary interactions.

Hasu 2y ago
I'm talking about Emancipation. So no, this isn't temporarily taking something from the rich, or something that could have been solved through "mutually beneficial voluntary action". The government told a bunch of rich people that the incredibly valuable people they owned were no longer their property, and gave money and land to the people who previously had nothing because they hadn't been considered people. That's what kicked off your Gilded Age
- ty6853 2y ago
  You're literally talking about moving violence enforced slavery to something closer to voluntary trade of labor. That's far from exclusively Marxian, even most brands of ancapism advocate such philosophy.
  - Hasu 2y ago
    Yes, it's also a wealth transfer, and slaveholders (other than in DC) were not compensated. If you're ignoring that huge economic event in your analysis of the economics of the latter half of the 19th century, trying to replicate it today is going to be very rough. Given your other replies in this thread, you're not interested in arguing honestly and I'm not going to continue engaging.
    - ty6853 2y ago
      The involuntary wealth transfer of slavery was from slaves to the rich, not the other way around. Framing it as the slaves taking from the rich when they stopped being slaves by no longer providing free labor is monumentally disingenuous, and I don't think you really believe that.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > I'm talking about Emancipation Emancipation isn't Marxist, historically or conceptually. > That's what kicked off your Gilded Age Absolutely not. "Railroads were the major growth industry," with industrialisation and immigration being the era's economic drivers [1]. "The South remained economically devastated after the American Civil War" and remained a drag on the American economy throughout most of the Gilded Age. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
- Spooky23 2y ago
  You’re out of your mind and blathering out of ignorance. Nothing about that era resembles Marxism, and I’d guess you’d struggle to tell the difference between Karl Marx and the Marx Brothers. Reconstruction was shut down. Slaves went from assets to contract services. Jim Crow ensured that there was no movement upward. For the aristocracy, they were hurt by the depredation of war but recovered stronger than before under the new system. The gilded age was about railroads. The south with their feudalist system was a backwater producing mostly raw material. They moved out of irrelevance because social control allowed them to control the Senate for decades.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Only in the South, and shortlived. The elite quickly regained control of both the land and means of production. It also had nothing to do with Marxism. There was no redistribution of land as in social revolutions in other countries (France, Russia, China).